


Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

by Cluegirl



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: AU, Black Sisters' Sibling rivalry, Darkfic, F/M, Ghost Sex, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, Multi, Near Drowning, No really this is seriously dark shit, Sexual Abuse, Slave Harry, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Voldemort triumphant, nudity in illustrations, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-11 01:46:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 36,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/106960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the worst case scenario is just the beginning of the fall, when you can lose all you loved and still keep losing more, when all you thought you'd be has become a mockery, when you have hit the rocky bottom, that is where, sometimes, you can find the strength to triumph at last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chirascuro

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The amazing [Lunulet](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lunulet/pseuds/Lunulet) created the cover for this story, and it deserved Pride of Place.


	2. La Mort Par l’Empoisonnement

The key to getting through the evening, Harry reminded himself, was to drink as much as he could, keep moving, and pretend he couldn't hear the whispers. It was only a Midsummer Ball, after all, not a battle. Only a ball, only a little gossip, only a few hundred stares taking in his elegant scarlet and gold robes and his carefully blank expression. He would rather have faced the end of the world again.

"Isn't that...?"

"Yes, of course. Who else would be allowed to wear those colors in the Great Lord's court?"

"Ooh, he's grown so much..."

"Taller, I know. And all that hair!"

But I thought he was..."

_Dead_. Harry thought.

A giggle. "What, dead? Where have you been since the War ended, Tessa, under a rock? He's Our Lord's advisor now -- goes with Him everywhere," the woman's voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper so un-subtle it might have been shouted across the crowded ballroom, "there are even rumors that he's Our Lord's own consort!"

Harry ground his teeth, clenched his fist hard under his flowing velvet sleeves, and wished he could hex the giggling trio into silence. His wand tapped against his side, mocking his ire, reminding him that it answered to only one wizard these days, and that wizard was not Harry Potter. _Consort_, he comforted himself,_ is a better word than Slave. Or Hostage. Or Trophy. Or Executioner. _

"But wasn't he... you know, on their side? Before? Surely Our Lord wouldn't trust a turncoat?"

_Wouldn't be the first time._ Harry scowled, grabbing another flute of champagne as a waiter drifted past. "Hey," he murmured to the man, "bring me a double vodka. Tovtry, no ice. And something to eat." He'd need something to base the drinking on if he wasn't to disgrace himself.

"Yes, Lord Executor," the waiter gulped, then darted away.

"And I suppose you know better than Lord Voldemort, do you?" The first woman's voice dripped scorn, recapturing his attention, "Our Lord knows he's nothing to fear from his enemies anymore, and keeping Harry Potter at his side proves it in my opinion."

Which was, of course, the very reason Voldemort kept Harry at his side. The Dark Lord knew how deeply Harry hated him, and how fiercely he longed for a chance to kill the man who had destroyed everything he loved in the world. But he had a taste for dangerous pets, did Lord Voldemort, and he took delight in the subtle torments his victory afforded him. Harry's passionate hatred amused him – he told Harry so one evening not long after the Northumberland Battle, and the fall of England to his rule. Quite a civil conversation for deadly enemies; a luxurious meal of chateaubriand and lobster thermidor, the trappings of elegance wielded like manacle and chain against Harry's helpless rage.

"Go on hating me, Pet," Voldemort had seemed to smile with paternal warmth, but his reptilian eyes couldn't bear up the lie, "go right on fighting inside your head. It won't change anything, but by all means, do try and keep me from getting bored with you." And then he dressed Harry in the finest clothes of sable, scarlet and gold, created Harry an official and despised office in his ruling cabinet, and paraded Harry proudly before the army of sycophants his conquest of Britain had conjured like roaches from the walls. And he smiled to Harry as if sharing a secret joke whenever he named him "my most trusted servant." And the spells that bound Harry helpless against the Dark Lord's will never so much as cracked.

"Sulking, Lord Executor? And here I thought tonight was to be a celebration!" Harry stiffened at the snide, simpering voice behind him and slammed back his champagne in one long pull. There wasn't enough alcohol in the whole palace to help when Harry had to speak to Pansy, but since he wasn't allowed opium, Harry knew he'd have to make the best of it.

Schooling his face into a condescending smirk – the one he'd learned from Snape -- Harry turned smartly to face her. "Not at all, my _dear _Mrs Malfoy. I was only waiting for the dancing to begin so you could stress-test my new boots." He smiled broader as Pansy glared, pressing her lips into a hard, ugly line. "And look," he nodded up at the gallery as if noticing it for the first time, "here are the musicians now." Harry gave a bow that was far too deep for her station and offered his arm, delighting in the way her broad face went pink with barely suppressed anger.

"As if I would lower myself to dance with a...a _slave_," she hissed, glancing nervously about.

Harry grinned wider and did not withdraw his arm. He could see the three girls who had been discussing him, all watching with rapt attention. "You either dance with a slave, or you explain to your husband's powerful friends why you're snubbing the Lord Executor. Your choice, you bloody great cow."

Pansy's nails dug fiercely into his wrist as she took his arm, and her eyes seethed with rage. "Laugh now, slave," she grumbled as Harry led her toward the middle of the ballroom, "rumor has it next week you'll be singing a different tune."

"Rumor?" So Pansy hadn't been told about the trip to France. Interesting, considering that the plans had been underway since Solstice, and in fact, they were meant to apparate out as soon as the Midsummer Ball was over. Voldemort would announce it soon, in fact. It almost made Harry wonder if Draco didn't trust her, or if the younger Malfoy wasn't trusted himself. "And what rumor would that be, Mrs. Malfoy?" Harry asked, borrowing Snapes condescending purr.

She trod on his foot -- hard, and not by accident. "The House Elves have been preparing your old _chambers_ at the Manor, my Lord slave," she smirked as Harry stifled a wince, "you know the ones, the Downstairs Suite." A windowless room in the dungeon, six feet square with a pile of straw to sleep on and an open toilet hole in the corner. Yes, Harry remembered the place. "Could it be Our Lord is getting tired of you at last, Potter?"

Harry replied by throwing the woman into a dip so deep and sudden she couldn't help but flail gracelessly and cling to him until he set her back upright. His back hated him for it, but it was worth it to see her face go florid and blotchy. "You could be right," he allowed, poker-faced, "but it's much more likely that you're taking the piss and don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Her eyes flashed, and her cheeks stained with anger, but a white hand gripped her shoulder before she could reply. "Pans, you've monopolized Potter for long enough," Draco said, tugging his wife away, "come and dance with me now." Pansy's outraged face as she stumbled into Draco's arms was priceless, but Harry found himself distracted by a strange, smug glint in his silver eyes.

_Something is going on._ Harry thought, glancing through the swirling dancers to the dais where Voldemort presided, _something I'm going to hate._ But as he turned to leave the dance floor, Harry found himself face to face with the Minister of Magic. Harry was too startled to resist when Lucius Malfoy caught his right hand and pulled him dancing-close, and only his quidditch reflexes saved him from a stumble when the man's hand found his hip through his robes. Lucius steered Harry backwards into a waltz without so much as a word, but Harry was up to the challenge – his dance tutors had been thorough, and made sure the young Lord Executor could partner either side of any dance his Lord might request. Harry kept his eyes locked to Lucius', knowing the older man could feel confidence in the easy balance of Harry's body against his. _You don't scare me,_ Harry let the corner of his mouth say, _not this easily._

The ice blue eyes hardened, and then Lucius Malfoy smiled too. "She's not, you know," he offered as the music changed from waltz to minuet, "lying, that is. I have received instructions regarding it." That made Harry stiffen, and that made Lucius really smile. "Oh yes. You will be our guest at Malfoy Manor for at least the next fortnight, young Mr. Potter."

"That's ridiculous. We're to meet with the French Ministry to negotiate-"

"Surely you don't imagine Our Lord would take his _Most Trusted Servant_ out of England? Why, rumour has it that France is simply crawling with Resistance curs – like that werewolf, for instance, your little mudblood friend, and the half-giant too, I believe." Harry kept a careful rein on his expression, but couldn't help feeling that Malfoy could see the sick horror twisting in his guts. "We couldn't possibly risk losing our Lord Executor to a _kidnapping_ now, could we?"

And Harry knew as surely as if he'd plucked the plan from Voldemort's mind, it was a trap. Lupin, Hermione and Hagrid were meant to think Harry would be with Voldemort when he came to the Continent. They were meant to try and rescue him. They were meant to die. And there was nothing he could do this time – he had nothing left with which to bargain for their lives or freedom, so Voldemort had no reason to even let Harry see the end in person. After all, Harry could hardly take a second Dark Mark. They didn't even need him for bait – just his name, his clothes, and a bit of his hair for the polyjuice.

_I hate you!_ He thought as loud as he could, glaring at the dais over Lucius' shoulder. The Dark Lord looked up with a red-eyed, serpentine smirk and toasted him for a reply.

"Your concern for my welfare," Harry heard himself say to Lucius, "is overwhelming."

"Oh, there's no need to be coy, my Lord Executor," Malfoy leered, stepping close under their upraised hands, close enough for his breath to tickle Harry's cheek with the scent of brandy, "I know better. You see, I've noticed something about you -- when you're frightened, you begin to sound just like the Traitor."

"I speak like Snape when I'm disgusted too," Harry snapped, snatching his hand away as the dance ended and dropping his bow short and sharp. "Sorry if it bothers your conscience!"

Lucius' eyes flashed dangerously bright as he lowered his own hand by slow inches. "You forget your place, slave," he whispered, "but two weeks should give me ample time to remind you of it I think," the man added with a smile that was all things false and shallow.

Harry gave him only a curl of lip before turning to stalk off the crowded dance floor. The revelers made haste to bail out of his path, giving Harry a scrap of comfort; to Voldemort he might be a trophy and to Lucius a jumped-up fucktoy, but to the Court at large he was still Harry Potter, Lord Executor, and the bloodied blade in the Dark Lord's hand; feared, if not respected.

"My Lord?" Harry whirled at the tentative voice, startling the waiter so badly he almost lost control of his tray. With an inward flinch, Harry swallowed down his rage and gave the trembling man a nod. The tray held a plate of canapés and a crystal bowl full of ice, in which nestled a tumbler half full of clear, viscous liquor.

That, at least, was a relief. But as Harry reached for the glass, his hand froze mid-air, shocked stiff as though hit with a _Petrificus Artus_. Shooting a furious glance at the head of the room, Harry was unsurprised to find Voldemort's eyes still on him. _God damn you, it's just one drink! You're luring my friends to their deaths, and you're giving me to that sadist while you do it, the least you can do is give me decent alcohol tonight!_

The reply was silky with amusement, cloyingly familiar as always. _Now, Pet, you know I dislike public drunkenness._ Harry's hand moved to take the plate instead, the fury restrained to a hairline tremble against the china. _And don't fret about missing the tour -- I'll be back in time to celebrate your birthday, after all. We'll have a little party just for you and your friends._ Harry's neck reddened with fury, and Voldemort's tone carried laughter when he continued. _Come here to me now – you should meet the new Inquisitor of Wales. I've just appointed him, and he's a fan of yours._

Harry nearly fumbled the plate as his arm was suddenly released. The waiter looked at him oddly, still offering the vodka he'd requested, until Harry sent him away with a reluctant shake of his head. Only then did he see the oysters. Five of them, glistening in their shells, nestled between the caviar and the foie gras. _Five. More than enough._ He cast a careful glance at the Dark Lord, who had turned his attention elsewhere. Yes. Then Harry started across the room, thinking about Wales with all his might while he slurped the oysters down and tried not to gag.

He put everything he had into the ruse – every scrap of occlumency he'd learned from Snape, every ounce of willpower and acting talent he possessed went into pretending he was only distracted while he met and shook hands with the new official. Nod. Thank you. No, haven't heard from any of them. Yes, very sad. Glad to have you, sure you'll do the office proud. Blah, blah, fucking blah. And all the while Harry could feel his throat constrict, hear the blood pound in his ears, feel his fingers tingle toward numbness. Only when he judged his reaction too far advanced to be stopped did Harry excuse himself to go to the toilet.

He barely made it, staggering the last few feet to fumble at the doorknob. The attendant screamed at the sight of his fierce smile and bluing lips, but the sound was far away and muffled in water -- useless. It actually made Harry want to laugh as his knees gave out and spilled him into the room. He thought something jarred his head as he fell wheezing into the welcome darkness, but couldn't bring himself to care.

~*~

The very last thing he expected was for his afterlife to resemble the Potions classroom at Hogwarts. But there it was, every stone complete with its lichen and soot, every table scarred, scorched and scrubbed clean, every cauldron, bottle and jar gleaming as though a thousand hapless detentioneers had just shuffled out. The room, even without its looming Master, made Harry's heart twist in his breast – a pain that surprised him with its intensity now at the end of his life even more than when it would swamp him in the silence of night or the noise of day. A thousand times Harry had choked down bile and hysteria at the sudden stab of memory, fiercely unwilling to allow Voldemort even so much as a scrap of what remained to him of his mentor and his lover.

_The Wheel, bound high on a pole overlooking the battlefield, crackling with ward upon ward until the very air around it is alive with deadly magic. His arms stretch wide and cramp with agony while the fierce Northumberland wind scrapes his naked flesh raw. His guardian angels hover at his pinioned hands to watch the coming slaughter. Clouded blue eyes on his right, devoid of sparkle behind their half-moon glasses, lips white and slack, beard cut short by the same axe-blow that had severed head from neck. And spiked over his left hand, so fresh that the blood trickling over Harry's wrist is still tepid, the jaw still clenched hard, the eyes still focused sharp and black on eternity..._

"Severus." His voice echoed from the stone, startling him out of his reverie. There was meant to be a tunnel of light, wasn't there? Something to lead him far away from the hell his world had become? "Huh." Harry wiped the back of his hand across his wet eyes. "Guess death doesn't make it hurt less."

"No, Harry." The voice. _That _voice, like velvet against the back of his neck, shocking him stiff with longing. "No, it does not."

"S Severus," he cursed his stammer, but had to be sure – he didn't think he could bear a hallucination now, "you are dead, aren't you?"

"Ten points to Gryffindor for Mr. Potter's keen sense of the obvious." The hand on his shoulder, just at the spot where Severus' lips touched his body for the first time. Harry shivered. "I am indeed, quite dead. And you are dying."

Harry turned with a sob of relief, grabbing at his lover's arms. "Oh thank God it's over!"

"Jumping the gun as usual, Potter." The black eyes were sad under the smirk. "I said that you were dying, not that you were dead. Your instinctive magic is even now keeping your body's allergic reaction at bay." Harry closed his eyes, feeling his heart sink. The chill brush of fingers along his scar made him look up to see Snape's ironic expression. "My compliments, however, for an admirable attempt – even I did not know you were allergic to shellfish."

"I kind of forgot myself, till I saw them on the plate," Harry admitted, unable to tear his eyes away from the face he had so sorely missed. "Oh God, Severus, I can't go back there! I can't-"

"You must, Harry. They are on their way to revive you now. Voldemort is with them." Snape offered a rueful smile, "I'm afraid he is not best pleased." Harry gave a wild start, tore himself away with a curse through clenched teeth. Snape let him go reluctantly. "Surely you did not believe suicide would be your means to freedom, Harry."

"I'm out of other options!" Harry shouted, "He owns me, Severus – he's bound my magic, he's bound my body, he's even bound that goddamned name to him – The Boy Who Lived at the Dark Lord's Command. Death is the only way I will _ever _get away from him!"

Snape folded his arms across his chest and glowered. "And that answer is good enough for you now? I remember a boy who fought off Death Eaters to rescue a corpse for its family to bury. I remember a boy who killed a basilisk by himself. I remember a boy who defied an army at my side."

"And I remember your head on a pike the day England fell! Des-despite everything I could do." Harry tried to snarl, but the words were too sharp and they snagged in this throat, pricked his eyes with tears. He stopped just to breathe for a second. "All this is easy for you to say, Severus, he can't hurt you anymore -- you're free."

"Free?" Irony streaked hot through that cool whisper, and then Harry felt the hand on his cheek, raising it, drawing it toward that homely, beloved face. He trembled at the hungry look in Severus' eyes, "No, lovely Harry. He can still hurt me, and I am not free."

"What do you-" he stopped as a cool thumb stroked over his lower lip.

"Name the three types of haunting."

_Dark Arts questions? Now?_ But Harry sighed against the brushing touch and obeyed. "Ghosts may haunt either a place, an object or a pers-" His eyes flew open, horrified, searching Severus' face for contradiction. "Or a person. Oh no. You're not haunting me."

One nod, grave and slow. "I promised I would not leave you, Harry, and you know I am a man of my word."

Harry shivered a moan as the hand moved, threading into his hair, loosening the tie that held it off his face and kept his scar in the world's view. "But I can feel your hands," he hissed the last word, eyes drifting closed, "must be this place, or maybe because I'm so close to-"

The cool lips silenced his, and Harry was lost. The kiss smelled of nothing, but Harry's mind filled in the familiar tastes of tobacco and tea and faintly bitter potions fume. He opened to the ghostly tongue and moaned again to find it solid against his own, stroking into his mouth, laving his teeth and lips as though starving -- just as Harry had been. He clutched at the sable robes, hands frantically mapping those familiar lines of hidden bone and sinew, branding them back into his memory.

It all felt so real, from the rough, heavy wool under his fingers to the chill of the stone floor seeping through his thin shoes. Severus had to be wrong. Surely his heart was stopping, even now. Harry moaned as Snape's hands fisted the thick waves of his loosened hair and clutched him even closer. _Oh God let him be wrong! Let me stay here with him-_

Then Snape pulled away suddenly, looking over his shoulder with a glower that crushed Harry's hopes. "Almost time to go," he said, smoothing his thumbs over Harry's damp cheeks, "but you must listen to me, quickly: The door is opening, and you are not so helpless as they have led you to believe-"

_ **Ennervate.** _

The hated voice echoed through the room and Harry cried out as a terrific force tugged like a portkey at his belly. He staggered, clutched at Snape's arms as hard as he could. "No! Don't let me go!"

"Listen to me! Keep your mask firm, show none of the changes! His binding weakens with distance -- when he leaves you, he will not be able to-"

_ **Ennervate.** _

Harry screamed, knees going out as the pain twisted in his guts, then lanced to his scarred forehead and the Dark Mark on his arm. And in a shattering eyeblink it was all gone – the Potions classroom, his ghostly lover, his merciful release. Harry found himself staring up at the bathroom's coffered ceiling, half-obscured by the thoroughly pissed countenance of his Lord and Master.

_Running away, Pet?_ Harry flinched from the thunderous voice in his head, but made no reply as he was hauled to his feet. _And here I thought I'd taught you better – what is mine remains mine until I decide otherwise. Even your death belongs to me!_

"Poison." Harry heard himself replying to the anxious clamor, "Resistance assassin. The waiter."

_No_! He raged silently as the guards were dispatched, _Damn you, he didn't know! It wasn't his fault!_

_Of course it wasn't, Pet,_ came the reply as Voldemort took his arm in an iron grip and led him back to the dais through the bowing, murmuring crowd, _it was your fault entirely. Which makes it all the more regrettable that you will kill him for it._

The trial was brief and pointless – everyone in the hall knew what the verdict would be. Harry made himself stare at the waiter, whose only crime had been to do his job. He refused to allow himself the comfort of looking away, made himself watch the waiter's face while the man realized he would never see his family again, and there was no reason for it. He had grey eyes that filled with tears and confusion, but somehow no recrimination, as Harry pointed his wand and cast the toneless spell.

A thud, a chorus of showy gasps from the crowd, then the grey eyes went dull and far away and tears streaked down his cooling flesh. Relief, Harry told himself; because for the waiter, it was over.

Lucius Malfoy's eyes glittered as he gave orders for the body to remain where it had fallen, and that icy spark made a different promise to Harry. 'You've angered him properly now,' the blue eyes crowed as Harry received the Minister's mocking reverence, 'as long as I return you fair of face and sound of body, I can do whatever I like to you, my pretty little slave. And I intend to.'

In reply, Harry simply stared at the ivory-haired man until he went away. The coming weeks would be plenty of time for power games – Harry'd had enough of them for one evening.

~*~

"You've gotten blood on your robes, Sir."

Harry managed not to roll his eyes at his valet's accusing tone. "It's my blood, Charles: I slipped and hit my head."

"Ah. This would explain your returning from the ball early and interrupting my book, I suppose." Harry ignored the tacit accusation and held his arms akimbo, staring straight ahead as the man began on his robe's fastenings, "I trust Sir enjoyed himself nonetheless?"

"Deeply," Harry growled, flexing his shoulders as the weight of the robes came away at last, "Please send those to be cleaned, Charles. I won't need them anytime soon."

Another sniff. "And shall I send your shirt to be burned, Sir?"

Harry touched his collar and winced when his fingers came away bloody. Ruined, of course. He stuck out his arms and let the valet take it off him. He didn't see any reason to protest when Charles kept going with his trousers, boots, and socks as well. Only when he felt the cool fingers brush the waistband of his pants did Harry back away. "Stop that," he said, glaring down at the man, only a little younger than himself, for all his constipated mannerisms, "just the bath tonight."

Charles stared back without flinching. "I have my orders, Sir. They are quite specific." And he reached for Harry again. The message was as clear as if Voldemort had signed his name to it. _You take all things when I give them to you, my Pet; even this. _

With the waiter's depthless grey eyes still fresh in his memory, Harry couldn't bring himself to resist the unwanted attention. He just leaned against the bedpost, closed his eyes and let Charles and his body negotiate the matter without him. He thought about Severus, the forgotten feel of his lover's tongue against his own, the desperate look in his eyes as Harry fell away from him, those clutching, nimble fingers in his hair-

Harry came with a sigh, gripping the bedpost so hard his fingers went numb. Only then did he notice tears prickling his eyelashes. Charles, wiping his mouth fastidiously, looked up just as Harry dashed them away. For a moment, their eyes met and held. The valet looked away first. "I...I'm sor-"

"No," Harry pushed off the bed, heading for the bathroom, "don't apologize; it's just too fucking cruel."

~*~


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Illustration of Harry's dance with Lucius Malfoy. By me.


	4. La Mort Par Noyade

They explained the rules to him as soon as the bodyguards left. Harry already knew what they amounted to: You have no rights, you have no name, and you have no opinions. Our whims will define your time here, and your behavior will have very little to do with anything. Telling him the rules was part of the game for the Malfoys – which was ironic, considering how profoundly little respect any of that family had for rules in the first place – so Harry he listened impassively, nodding and murmuring where it seemed expected. Whip and knife cuts to be healed once every three days, food and water to be earned by compliance, clothing of any sort expressly forbidden, punishment to be expected for doing just about anything. Nothing new, nothing imaginative – in his three years with Voldemort, having been given into Malfoy's care whenever he became difficult, stubborn, or the Dark Lord had a bad day, Harry'd had ample opportunity to learn the steps of this dance.

But this time, Harry meant to steal the lead. The idea had come to him in the carriage, with the memory of Severus' last words in his ear. The bindings weakened with distance. And Voldemort was already in France – his entourage apparated out at the end of the Midsummer Ball. Surely by now he would be far enough to miss little, critical details. Distracted as well, laying his traps and spinning his webs. And the Malfoy idea of sex-play was dangerous stuff. Knives and garrotes, masks and whips and sloshing basins, and objects forced choking-deep into one's mouth meant plenty of opportunities for things to go quickly, drastically wrong. Harry was going to see Severus again, he decided, and he was going to use the Malfoys to do it. So he watched the four of them while the rules were read, gauged their reactions, planned his strategy.

Pansy listened to her father-in-law with eager glee, already flushed above her ample periwinkle robes as she stared at Harry's body. He guessed she was planning something tiresome and unimaginative, like forcing him down between her legs at dinner, or demanding he put on one of her dresses and fuck her over the billiard table. Useless, she was. Pansy didn't have the force of will to take him where he wanted to go. The only way she would kill him would be if he suffocated in her thighs.

Draco was more promising. He stood beside the window, peering out at the rain-swept lawn and sullenly refusing to acknowledge Harry's presence at all. Not that his classmate was disinterested. Harry noticed how the silver eyes fixed on his reflection in the glass, read resentment and rage buried there. Draco would avoid him for the first several days, but the blonde would be savagely fucking Harry before long and cursing him all the while. Bites and bruises and broken bones from him. No patience for binding more than just what it took to keep Harry from fighting back. Harry never worked out exactly why the younger Malfoy hated him so deeply, but for this visit, it suited his purposes just fine. He could still feel the lump where his head had struck the bathroom sink the night before, and it couldn't be too hard to arrange another hit just there.

Lucius was, of course, the most likely choice. He had never made a secret of his feelings where Harry was concerned: avarice, lust, contempt and covetous cruelty for his Master's property. Harry stifled a shiver as he watched the Minister, pale and elegant, prowling like a tiger about the room and all but licking his chops in anticipation. It would be dominance games from him – control more than pain, though there would be plenty of that as well. Bondage, scare tactics, everything his cruelly creative mind could dream up to drive home Harry's utter helplessness.

Harry never let on that it wasn't in Malfoy's power to do so. Voldemort defined helplessness in Harry's life -- an ever-present spectre, unblinking and amused in the corner of his mind. All Malfoy's most imaginative torments could do was give Harry something tangible he could fight, which was actually something of a relief. Still, the ivory-haired man had a way of twisting Harry's body into complicity, tickling agony just onto the line of pleasure, and keeping Harry teetering there until he thought he might shatter. Then he would give Harry the tiniest crumb of unclouded sensuality – a velvet touch flicking against the creaking fault. Ashes, ashes, and down he'd fall every damn time.

_Shit. Don't get hard!_ Harry ground his fist closed against his naked thigh, _look at Pansy, Harry, look! She's forgotten that her tongue's poking out, and her eyes are glazing over. Think of her kissing you. _

Composure recovered, Harry returned cautiously to his mental plotting. Getting Lucius to make a mistake would be tricky – the man took his control quite seriously, of himself and of his possessions. But he had no less of a temper than his son, and Harry had a gift for getting on the wrong side of it. It was possible, if Harry kept his wits about him. He moved on before Lucius' pacing glide could undermine his concentration again.

Narcissa reclined across her chaise, looking elegantly bored with the whole process. Harry knew her distain would not last long, for Lady Malfoy was very fond of the knife and the whip, the clamp and the candle. She fancied herself an artiste when it came to dealing out pain, and she did it with a patience and delicacy that put the others to pale. She had once confided in Harry that he was her favorite canvas, for she had never seen skin with such a flawless texture in all her years. Harry considered her a likely candidate, because it is so easy to slip with a sharp knife, but then she was also the most careful of the family. It would take a lot for her to be reckless with a blade. Harry relegated her to a longshot, and refocused his attention on the Lord of the Manor. Watching. Planning.

 

~*~

It took him only three days to crack Malfoy's temper wide open and land himself in the Grotto. Harry was actually rather surprised at how easy it was, once he abandoned the idea of avoiding punishment and pain, and began to deliberately provoke it in subtle, infuriating ways. He waited a second too long to lower his eyes, he smiled at the family members, he sat with too much ease, he failed to hide a smirk when insulted.

He drove Narcissa nearly to tears on his second night at the Manor by humming as she whipped him. (Not that it hadn't hurt – she'd already been at him with the pins for an hour.) But Harry thought of Severus' lips against his, and found the strength to turn his screams into endless repetitions of 'I'm Henry the Eighth', in time with the slap of leather across his bloody skin. He'd had to be carried back to his cell after, and Lucius cast a light healing charm on him despite their rules.

The next day, Harry started on Pansy. He followed her with his eyes, stared her down when the others weren't looking, fixed his face in a knowing smile. 'You don't fool anyone,' he told her silently, 'I know what you really want from me.' By lunchtime, she couldn't stand it anymore. But this time when she dragged him off behind the stables, Harry twisted her hands behind her, jerked her head back by the hair and hissed obscenities in her ear. "Whore. Slut. You love this, don't you, you little-" The same sort of things they slung at him, but their effect on young Mrs. Malfoy was far more dramatic. She came harder than she ever had in her life, and when Harry let her up, she ran sobbing back to the house without bothering to fix her robes. When Harry made his way across the lawn ten minutes later, he saw Lucius watching him from an upstairs window. Their eyes met across the distance, and a frisson of fear went through Harry. He was close. Very close.

Lucius had Harry that night, and Harry behaved himself. Almost. He sucked when told to suck, but was a little careless with his teeth. He begged when told to beg, but was just a little less than convincing. He struggled against his bonds, but not quite as hard as he could, and gave up moments too soon for satisfaction. He spoiled the game by reminding Lucius at every turn that it was only a game, and that no matter what Malfoy could do to Harry's body, his true Master was elsewhere.

Soon the whip fell harder, cut deeper, and the chains pulled tearing-tight, as if by pain Malfoy could melt down the man Harry had become, render him back to the boy he had been at his capture. "Delusional child, don't you remember what you are?" He hissed between blows that rocked Harry breathless, "Have you let our Lord's indulgences fool you?" Lucius grunted, and the whip bit again, "Fine robes! Elegant chambers! Laughable titles do not make you anything but a slave!" The bullwhip slither-clattered to the floor. Shoes tapped through the counterpoint of Harry's ragged breath. Cruel fingers knotted in his hair, craned back his head. Lucius pressed close, and his silk robes felt like burning ash against Harry's raw, bloodied back. "You will never-" Lucius' voice in his ear, hard and hateful, "be anything-" Lucius' blunt prick nosing up between his straining legs, "more than this!"

"Hng!" He couldn't hold it back, or the shiver that went with the terrible pain. Harry's eyes flew open, greeted immediately with the mirror that had been placed there just for that purpose. He could see the blood -- his blood -- dripping down Malfoy's balls, and it almost made him scream. But after a moment, the breathless quiver in his belly surprised him, escaping as a giggle. "Doesn't that hurt?" Harry managed to whisper when Lucius shoved at him again.

"What was that?" Lucius froze, and his glittering eyes narrowed dangerously.

"For you, I mean – no lube. K-kind of binds, doesn't it?" Harry couldn't keep the glint out of his eyes white hands closed around his throat and squeezed. He thrashed, strained to keep his eyes focused through the wandering spots of black, even allowed himself to acknowledge the aching thrill as his prostate took blow after blow. He arched up, grimacing as the punishment wrenched an orgasm out of him, spraying the floor with fat, hot splats of come. A second later, he felt Lucius spend inside him – a stinging rush of heat against his sore flesh.

Blood thundered in his ears, his animal brain howled for air, but Harry held himself still as the hands came away and Lucius leaned almost wearily into his ravaged back. Trembling with the effort, Harry counted slowly to three, opened his eyes, turned his head to stare at his tormentor, and only _then_ took a single, shaking breath. Then he raised one eyebrow, as if to ask, 'Is that all?'

Lucius froze mid-glower. Then he snarled and reared back, the sudden movement dragging his cock free of Harry with a wet sound. Harry grunted, bore down against the spasm, and so was not ready when the serpent-headed cane came crashing down across his ribs. Harry arched back, wheezing a voiceless scream. The cane came down again, laying welt after welt across his belly, chest, and hips, making it impossible for him to recover the breath he'd been so carefully controlling. All Harry could manage was to keep his teeth closed around his cries. Then an ill-timed wriggle put his crotch under the slashing cane, and Harry's world exploded suddenly through pain and into welcome darkness.

~*~

When Harry woke up again, he was chained in the Grotto – blind, masked, sore, cold, and scared. Harry licked his lips, tasted spunk and blood there, and quelled a shiver. He could hear the restless tide on the other side of the rock wall, could feel the tug and nudge of the wind as it found its way through the sea caves and rock chimneys. It moaned like a woman in grief as it stirred his hair against his back. He hated the Grotto; really hated it. A whimper clawed out of Harry's throat, but then he fought down the welling hysteria furiously – he'd wanted this, damn it!

But that was cold comfort against the tremble in his belly, and the memory of chill water all around him. His arms were single-sleeved behind him, laced tightly from wrist to shoulder, leaving his fingers trailing through the sand. He wondered, not for the first time, whether the hard things he felt were pebbles or teeth. Steel manacles were like ice against his ankles, and the damp sand ground in the whip cuts on his arse and legs as Harry tested the chains' give. Loose enough to stand, but not to get his legs together. Not a good sign, that; with his arms immobilized, he would have no way to resist the tide as it filled the chamber – which it did, he recalled, very, very quickly. Oh, he really hated the Grotto!

The cold draught and strained position made his whip-cuts throb and promise agony at the sea water's touch. Salty air burned in the back of Harry's throat as he fought another sob -- a phantom taste that his nose couldn't verify, because the hoses taped in his nostrils brought his air from somewhere far above. A leather half-hood bound tightly across his cheek and jaw, holding the hoses in place. The hood had no eyeholes, and it left his mouth uncovered to the air... soon to the water. Malfoy's idea of a joke, that hood; the wearer had to remember to keep his mouth shut, and breathe only through the nose -- hard to do with seawater swamping you, and the hoses didn't bring all that much air, really... Another shiver. Harry took a deep breath while he still could.

"Do you expect me to beg?" He called in a shaking voice. Because he was almost ready to. Almost. No reply, but he knew Lucius was listening. Harry wondered briefly if Voldemort were listening as well, from somewhere too far away to stop the whole thing. That refocused his will; this was about escape. This was about taking back control. This was about freedom. _This is about Severus! _

_Carry the game, Potter. _ Harry gasped, shocked but centered at the ghost's unexpected voice in his mind. _Beg him. Plead. Keep up your act!_

"Th-this is really stupid, Lucius!" Harry didn't have to fake the quaver or the edge of panic. "I could drown down here!" Nothing. No reply. Harry could almost imagine the Minister of Magic sipping at a brandy while he listened. And he would be listening, watching Harry's torment through a visorb or mirror, glowering and smirking, and -- "God damn it Lucius Malfoy, if you kill me, you'll be sorry!"

"Perhaps," the silky voice said against his shrouded ear, still tickling with the spell that sent it there, "but not nearly so sorry as you, _Pet_."

Then Harry heard it; the boom and thrash outside changed tone, got louder, fiercer. The tide was coming in. He surged to his feet with a ragged cry, scrambling backward across the sand until his chained ankles brought him up sharp. "Carefully now," Lucius warned as Harry staggered, "wouldn't want to pull out your air hoses so early in the game."

"They're unsecured?!" Harry shrilled in genuine panic as the first wave rushed in around his ankles, "You fucker! This isn't a damned game anymore, this is the ocean! You can't control it, Lucius!"

"Of course not," his voice was fading now, the spell disrupted by the thrashing, rushing water, "but the point is, neither can you."

The next large wave swept Harry off his feet, hurling him against the ragged wall before towing him under. Only fierce will kept him from wasting his air in a scream. He had to keep his mouth closed -- couldn't give his intentions away until the Grotto was flooded, and it was too late for anyone to save him. He struggled upright just in time for another surge but managed to brace himself against it, only getting a faceful of foam this time. The current floated him now, tugging his ankles raw against the manacles, bobbing him like a fishing float in the waves. Harry had to tilt his face upward to manage one last shout before the waves filled the room. "Fuck you, Malfoy!"

When the last wave came, Harry ducked into it, squared his shoulders and let it buffet him back again. He lost his air when he hit the wall, and as before, he heard his skull give a sickening crack. Then –

God, God! His throat, his lungs burned like acid, like whirling shards of glass, like a thousand knives! Harry coughed, screamed and thrashed, drawing in more water, feeling it burn through his sinuses and out his nose, flooding his breathing tubes as he flopped weakly against the chains. Back and forth the current dragged him, bumping his flaccid cock against his thigh while grit and sand and seawater tickled his skin. The last thing that occurred to Harry as the terror faded into emptiness was that his scar ached terribly.

~*~

The Potions classroom. The icy stone floor under his feet. The dusty, stillroom funk in his nostrils. Harry opened his eyes with a grin.

"I would congratulate you Harry," Snape said, coalescing out of the gloom, "only you have never had much trouble nearly getting yourself killed." Then he grunted and staggered as Harry grabbed him into a fierce hug. But the ghost's arms clasped the young man just as strongly, held on just as tightly, as if revering the solid beat of a heart against his own long-stilled breast. "How do you feel?"

Harry sniffed, smiled to feel the lips moving against his hair. "Strange. I mean, I should be terrified. I was terrified – off my nut just a minute ago, but now..." he looked up into the ghost, his lover, his guardian's eyes, and smiled, "now I just want to kiss you."

And he did, fiercely, thoroughly, winding his hands deep into the coarse hair and plundering Severus' mouth with a heartfelt groan. Snape met and matched his passion, crushing Harry close, his fingers clasping and urgent against his back, his shoulders, his arse. Yes. This made the drowning worth it. This was home, these arms, _these_ lips.

"God, I missed you!" Harry gasped once he could make himself drag his mouth away.

"I beg to differ," Severus' voice puffed against his ear, rich with laughter, "You hit me pretty well square on, I think."

Harry pulled away, staring in open-mouthed outrage. "I do not believe it! I knew you for ten years, lived with you for three of them, and I never once heard you crack a joke! You finally got a sense of humor after you're DEAD?!"

Severus raised one sardonic eyebrow, as if to reassure Harry that nothing had really changed. But then he spoiled the illusion with a grin the like of which Harry had never thought possible. The angles would not bear it, the bones would crack under such an expression, the moon reverse its orbit and the tide roll backward, surely! But there it was, larger – much larger – than life. "I prefer to think of it as a sense of perspective, Harry," Severus purred, "There is nothing like dying to remind one of what is truly important." And then the smile changed, grew deep roots of fire and need that sparked a fierce echo in Harry's guts.

"OhGod!" He breathed, and threw himself back into the ghost's outstretched arms.

"Merlin, yes!" Severus agreed, and caught him.

The dungeon floor was all they needed. Three years of loss and hunger consumed them there in desperate lips, and clutching hands. Clothes disappeared unremarked, fingers oiled smoothly without source or need of comment, and when Harry at last begged Severus to take him, it was only pleasure that made him scream. He surged against his lover's chest, torn between the need to thrust and writhe against the welcome invader, and the desperate urge to simply clasp his arms and legs around Severus' back and never, ever let himself be prised loose.

But then Severus was moving inside him, black eyes locked onto his own, long smooth fingers stroking his cock in time with the gentle, rocking thrusts. Their rhythm. The one he tried to tell himself he'd forgotten, he didn't miss, was nothing but bumping anyway, and no point mourning it (or him) because what was gone was gone, (sweat dripping into his eyes, teeth working hard on his shoulder, yes, oh_God_ yes, like that.) and if nothing ever burned him to the ground this way again (yes, harder now, making that muscle in his back jump with the effort of meeting thrust for thrust,) then he would just. Have to. Live. Without. It!

Harry came with a scream, the passion ripping out of him like a whirlwind, like a tidal wave, like dying. He clung to Severus' chest, startled and helpless as sobs overwhelmed him. _I don't cry! Why am I doing this? I never cry! _ But he was; for the first time since the Northumberland Battle, Harry Potter was crying so hard his bones felt loose: if Snape hadn't been holding him, he suspected he might have fallen apart entirely. "I don't want to go back," he sobbed, "oh God, I can't lose you! Not again!"

Severus said nothing, merely stroked Harry's heaving back until three years' worth of grief and despair had torn itself loose. It took less time than either expected.

"Why?" Harry hiccoughed at last, nuzzling his drying face under Snape's collarbone, as if he was still a child.

"What do you mean?"

"Why did you let me see you?" He pulled away, "I know you couldn't haunt me properly – the wards on me wouldn't allow it. But why the hell did you have to remind me, Severus? Three years, I've been filling my life up with nothing so that nothing would be all He could take from me. Three years, because without you, emptiness was all I wanted!" Harry's voice quavered, but the tears were through; it was time for answers now. "Why did you have to come to me when you knew I couldn't really have you back?"

The question should have started a fight -- would have done if Snape had still been alive. Now, it only made the ghost smile sadly and stroke Harry's face. "Because you need me," he said, "for what is to come, Harry, you must have a guide you trust."

Harry stared at him, at the unlovely face that he still loved so hopelessly, feeling his mind whirl and skitter so deep there were no words for the thoughts. He could see the line the axe had left across Snape's neck – a silver seam roping over the strong, arcing cords of muscle and sinew. When he spoke, tiny whisps of steam escaped the wound. "All right," Harry said at last, "tell me then."

Snape told him, and Harry listened to it all; awed, alarmed, even a little sickened in places.

"So the reason Voldemort was so powerful when he came back from the dead wasn't because he used my blood-"

"It was that the proximity to death had changed him. Living cannot manifest any soul in its entirety, only a fraction comes through, and the rest is bound out behind barriers no mage can breach. Death, however, breaks down those barriers. When Tom Riddle curse backfired on you, his soul prepared for its passing."

"Only he didn't pass," Harry mused, wrapping his hands about his knees to think, "he came back to life and his barriers didn't go back where they had been before, did they?"

"Exactly," Snape agreed, "just as your barriers are eroded each time you return to life from this threshold. If Voldemort looked you in the eye today, he would justly fear your power. Very soon he will not be able to bind you at all."

"So you're telling me that these near death experiences are my ticket to freedom?" Harry frowned, got up to pace. "What would be the point of breaking away from Him now? The Death Eaters run things in England. I should know, I sit all the bloody council meetings; they are an army, Severus, thousands of them. Even if I got loose, or killed-" Harry swallowed, made himself say the name, "Voldemort somehow, I don't have an army of my own to fight them! And _don't-_" he held up a hand as Snape opened his mouth to speak, "don't talk to me about the Order, either, because the Order is shattered! Remus is all that's left, and the best his pathetic Resistance can manage is to play Pimpernel once in awhile, and raid English prisons. Nobody takes them seriously!"

"There is still you, Harry," Snape observed, leaning easily against one of the stained tables when Harry turned to glare. He didn't look smug or snide, just expectant. It made Harry want to scream.

"And that's not enough!" He knotted his fists, angry at being made to say the words aloud. "The war is _over_, Severus; we lost!"

"No war is over," a familiar, scathing eyebrow, "while the men who began it still live to draw breath; the fight is merely carried to a different battlefield. You, Harry Potter, have a weapon more powerful than anything Dumbledore, the Order, or the Ministry ever had at their disposal." Harry blinked as Snape crossed the floor, reaching out to take his left hand in cool, strong fingers. "A weapon more powerful than your bound wand, or even your mother's life spell; you have a Dark Mark, Harry, one which you did not willingly accept." He looked down as those pale fingers slid reverently over the brand. Harry's arm seemed to be shaking under the touch, but he couldn't work out why. "A tiny piece of Voldemort's soul branded into your skin. You need only find the strength to use it."

"Use it," Harry gulped, "what do you mean his soul? How can I-"

But he stopped with a shiver as the ghost's cool breath gusted across his ear, and a finger traced the ragged scar across his brow. "The binding works both ways, Harry," he whispered, "both ways."

_ **Revivo!** _

A woman with golden-blonde hair escaping in tendrils to spiral down toward his face. Her eyes are wide and worried, creasing her brow in a way that seems entirely strange. Her lips are moving fast and look pale in the strobing blue light her wand emits as she waves it over his chest.

"Look, Harry," Snape whispered in his ear, pressing his body behind Harry's, steadying him against the vision's force, "look carefully."

_A pale-haired man, trembling with cold and fury. Soaked through. Coughing. Terrified. His fists are clenched, and he looks as if he wants to break something._

"Look deeper than that. It's there. Search for it."

_ **Revivo!** _

Harry shuddered, clutched at Snape's hands. Then he gasped aloud. "Her eyes! They're wide open! I could walk right in-"

"Yes," there was pride in that voice, rarer than diamonds. "but not to much effect. Not yet. Do you understand?"

_ **Revivo!** _

He did understand. He could see Narcissa's thoughts swimming like fish below thin ice. He could almost taste Lucius' churning, raging mind from where he lay, but he knew he needed more. Harry turned in Severus' arms for one last kiss.

"I'll see you soon," Harry breathed once their lips parted, then he allowed himself to fall backward into the cold, bruised flesh which awaited him.

~*~

 

A day passed in darkness, delirium, and absolute solitude. Sprawled on the cold stones of his dungeon chamber – because he had just enough strength to crawl clear of the vermin-riddled pile of straw before collapsing – Harry only managed to track the passage of hours by the furtive, near-silent visits by the House Elves. Rustling footfalls woke him from oblivion six times, and three of those, there was food left behind. Not much; dry bread, broth and weak tea, but food nonetheless. Harry ignored it, craving sleep far more, and knowing he had to get it while he could. To heal. To be strong enough for the next time.

Halfway through the second day, sleep deserted Harry, and the pain set in. His head throbbed counterpoint to the cuts on his back. He found he could only steal breaths in tiny, pained slips, though he couldn't say whether that was because of his waterlogged lungs or the hot swelling over his ribs. It took all of Harry's focus to make himself crawl to the tray by the door and once there, he almost couldn't eat any of it. The broth had long gone cold and a greasy scrim floated across the top. The bread was rat-gnawed. He wouldn't put it past them to have drugged it as well, just to keep him quiet. Not like he needed the help there – not with his skull pounding out concussion in a constant tattoo.

Where was the mediwizard? Harry's head swam with the effort of sitting against the wall, and he had to hang one arm straight out from the too-short chain. His sore back flinched at first contact with the icy stones, but soon began to numb a bit. And itch. Malfoy was playing a dangerous game here. Scars were absolutely forbidden – Voldemort had made it crystal clear that the only marks he would tolerate on Harry were the ones he himself had put there; the brand and the scar, the arm and the face. If Malfoy didn't send a healer soon, no amount of magic would keep those whip-cuts from becoming infected, suppurating, and yes, scarring. Narcissa's first aid spells had been enough to draw him back, but surely they would send a proper expert soon.

Wouldn't they?

Harry ate as much as he could force himself to do, then spent the rest of his strength in an hours-long crawl to the toilet hole. He managed not to vomit, and contented himself with being proud of that as he sought his clean spot and more sleep. But this sleep was fractious with sweat and pain – so restless it was almost an effort. He felt more exhausted every time his jolting twitches woke him, and before long he found he simply did not have the energy to try anymore. All he could do was lie still and stare into the darkness, waiting.

"I get it," he whispered, filling the silence as he could, keeping the memories at bay with his own reedy voice, "they're looking for a healer who won't say what happened. They have to keep it a secret, or He'll have their heads..." But that wasn't right. His scar had flared just before the darkness whelmed him last time, and Harry had felt a glancing blow from the Dark Lord's mind as he'd gone under. Voldemort knew already – he had to. So what could the Malfoys be playing at?

He gnawed the question over and over, well aware that the waiting was meant to do wear him down in just that way. While he had something to strive against, Harry could stay strong, resistant, sane. But in the void, without even the hateful presence of the Dark Lord to focus on, Harry had no defenses – nothing between him and the memories. And the memories were crueler by far. So Harry worried about Malfoy's intent with a kind of desperate urgency, and prayed in a barricaded corner of his mind that whatever that sadistic bastard was planning, he'd get round to it before the dreams began.

But the second day passed away in silence as well.

_Oliver Wood and Cho Chang break through the Death Eater's air defense line together while the other fliers – most of Hogwarts' surviving quidditch players -- draw the attack away. Dodging curses, the Alliance's two best fliers make for Harry, arrowing out of the steely clouds with rescue in their eyes. He screams warnings, desperate and horrified as he strains against the Wheel, but the wind snatches his words with laughing scorn. They don't hear him at all until just before the wards snap closed around them. Harry can only watch as they break and fall like burning, flailing stars. Cho screams his name as she dies._

Harry flinched awake with a gasp. The House Elf at the door squeaked and disappeared with a ping, leaving another tray of food. He wrapped his arms about himself, trembling at the nausea. A fatty, smoky reek undercut the dungeon's normal stench, and it made Harry's stomach turn. He crawled to the door, fetched the tray, and dumped the entire thing into the toilet hole.

_Hermione stares at him, too stunned and horrified to even close her mouth as tears course down her grimy cheeks. She reaches for him, he flinches back, throws the cell door wider. "Go. Just go, and never come back," he makes his voice icy and cruel, "You can't save me. Not ever."_

"Oh Harry," she finds her tongue at last, "what have you done?"

He resists the urge to hide his bandaged arm more deeply in his sleeve, feeling as if she can see the brand anyway. God knows he can still smell the burning singe himself. "You'd better get started. I can promise you only a couple of hours before you're missed."

"I won't. Not without Ron."

Harry shakes his head. "Ron's dead. I killed him." Hermione's face crumbles. "You have to go!" He prods.

"You didn't!" She lunges forward, rips his sleeve and the bandage loose, "You're lying, you're-" But the weeping, angry Mark glares her into silence. Harry can feel her fingers going cold around his. 'I did it for Ron', he wants to tell her, 'I had to, or they wouldn't have let him go.' But the words are too sharp, and they cut his voice to silence.

When she slaps him, Harry stands still and takes it. What else can he do?

"Damn you, Harry Potter," she hisses, shaking as she backs away from him, "God damn you to Hell!"

"Just-" he shakes his head, forces himself to breathe slow, steady, not to shake, not to scream and beg her to understand. How could she? Why should she? Why should anyone? He apparates away, back to his own rooms, where Voldemort and his dinner wait for him. He only realizes later that night that he never said he was sorry, never said he loved her. Now he will never get another chance.

Harry's groan woke him enough to find his face wet and his chest twisted tight in iron bands. He panted a few breaths, blinking hard, clutching at the stones beneath him. But the Dreams swarmed up after him, and dragged him back down despite the pain.

_Lupin's arms close hard around him as he lunges for the veiled archway -- for Sirius. He's just there – just on the other side! Harry just has to go through and get him!_

**No. Stop this.**

Severus' voice, cracking with rage as the Death Eaters force them apart. "Harry! NO!" His wand goes flying, and then there is nothing but black robes and white masks and spellfire and blood and spellfire and blood.

**I mean it. Stop at once!**

"I think... I think I'm scared," Harry says, wrapping his arms around himself, "we've never attacked them before. We've never carried the offensive."

"You've never had time to think about it before risking your fool life, you mean." The black eyes don't seem as sharp as he expected, just tired. And worried. "Welcome, Mr Potter, to my world."

The potions jars stare at him with milky curiosity, and Harry glowers back. "It's all going to be different after tomorrow," he whispers, "one way or another."

"Any day is like that," Snape shrugs, lighting the fire, "try not to think about it."

"Well, what should I think about instead?" Harry's angry now, or trying to be, because the lead weight in his belly is so very alien to him, "How you're going to be right there when we attack? How you'll have to fight back as hard as you can 'cause if they catch you pulling punches, they'll slaughter you? How we won't even have a way to guess who you are? How you might have to kill one of us, or we might-"

"I am aware of it!" There is that familiar growl, patience at an end, "kindly leave my concerns to me!"

"Fine," Harry snarls, folding his arms and turning away. The bottled things stare at him. He stares back.

Snape sighs. "Potter, why are you in my dungeon, picking a fight at three in the morning when we both need sleep before we risk our lives tomorrow?"

"I'm trying not to think about it," he admits, shakily. "Come on, Professor, you're always good for a distraction; make me furious, scream at me, insult me or my father, or Sirius. I still wouldn't sleep, but at least it'd be better than-" a rustle behind him, a warmth. Arms slide over his, wrap him in warmth, and pull him into the embrace. "What...what are you doing, Sir?" He manages to breathe.

"I am holding you."

"Oh." He lets his hands rise, close timidly over the arms that cross his breastbone. They relax by tiny increments, and he does as well. "Why are you holding me, Sir?" Harry manages at last.

"Because you are scared," the answer gusts against his ear, unladen with sneer or sarcasm, "and it's all going to be different after tomorrow." Then the lips touch him, just a chaste kiss dropped gently at the curve of his shoulder, but it makes Harry catch his breath and shiver uncontrollably. The arms are not quite so soft then, and Harry can almost feel them intending to pull away.

Harry turns inside the fragile embrace before it can flee. "Any day is like that, really," he whispers, snaking his arms around the Potions Master's back and laying his cheek on his collarbone just beside the row of buttons, "just try not to think about it."

 

The dream released Harry gently that time, let him bob to the surface like driftwood in the current. The taste of that first night with Snape – with Severus -- lingered in his mouth, the heat of it coiled in his belly and raised its eager head from between his legs. He blinked to find his hand already there, fingers gently stroking the hard flesh. He snatched his hand away, cheeks flaming furiously, but the sudden bite of the chill air made his cock jump and his balls tighten.

"Fuck," Harry swore, pressing both fists against the floor. Even without touching himself, he could feel the orgasm tensing to spring. He was too far gone already to stop it, and too lonely to work up the desperation he would need to turn his impending release into a faceless fact of biology. His dreams had betrayed him again. "No, please," he begged himself, "don't give Him this-"

But wait. Voldemort was gone to France, too far away tonight to get his fingers into what was left of Harry's heart. He couldn't deny him this, couldn't pervert it. Could he? Harry held his breath, hands trembling as his cock wept a thread of sticky precome onto his belly.

_Touch_. The dream whispered in Severus' voice, _Let me feel you again. _

"Yessss..." the word had barely enough force to stir the dust from his lips – no more strength than the feather-light brush of his fingers against his straining glans. Carefully, so carefully he stroked along the underside, tracing the vein, circling the ridged crown, fighting back the urge to lunge after his own hand. He held his breath, wrapped his hand, finger by finger around his cock – just held it, a tight, unmoving pressure while the blood howled in his ears. Everything in Harry focused there in the span of his palm – every shred of willpower, every speck of strength wrapped up in Not. Coming. Yet.

Catspaws of magic crawled off his skin unnoticed, smoking and curling up the walls of his prison. They slithered unseen and unfelt along the floor, as smooth as Harry's breath was ragged. They nosed after the gaoler's wards, tickling those spells out of hiding, teasing, seducing their meanings and weaknesses from them. When he finally began to move his hand, there was hardly a stone or bar that didn't show some glimmer of ancient, cruel magic. Verdant tendrils wreathed each glyph, pulsing and brightening to the slow rhythm of his fist.

"Nnnnng!" Harry whined, hearing/not hearing the chime and thrum of power behind his wordless plea. _Release...please!_ The magic heard though, and the misty, lambent threads began to change, green bleeding to silver, eclipsing the furtive glow of the older spells. His hips thrust up, rocking counterpoint to his clutching, thumbing, sweatycold and desperate, God how long has it been, anyway grip. Alone in his mind for the first time in three years, Harry was lost, overwhelmed in his memories of Severus. The musky, acrid smell of his skin, his hair bitter and heavy when it wanted washing. The taste of his tea, secondhand and hungry on his invading tongue. The clever fingers that always knew how to make him writhe. The desperate, reckless cries he taught Harry to wring from him. "Severusss...." Hadn't said that name aloud since he died – not since that horrible day on the Wheel. Now it lingered on Harry's lips like a kiss in the dark.

The wards began to change, crumbling, reforming, shored up in some places by the silver fire, undermined and sapped dead in others. Spells meant to strengthen the iron bars began to decay them instead, the chains' cleaning charms turned to rusting hexes, vermin invocations inverted and became repeller spells. And what the magic could not find a way to subvert, it destroyed – torment spells, nightmare spells, will-sappers and confusion hexes, all picked apart and strangled in the silver light. The first wards destroyed were those meant to ground any spectral energy and banish ghostly presences from the blood-soaked dungeon. Those spells the light attacked so viciously as to fracture the stones which bore them. Harry was so far gone, he didn't hear the cracking.

Oh, he was close; teetering on the edge so brittle and bright he could taste madness in it. He wanted more, wanted to wait, wanted more, wanted, wanted, wanted long, cool hands against him, fingers wrapping silver and ghostly over his own, cradling his tight, heavy, volatile balls. Wanted a glimpse of hooked nose and slippery hair through his slitted eyes as he arched up breathless off the floor. Wanted one single lick from an icy, not-quite-there tongue to grant him orgasm and absolution.

Harry came harder than he'd thought possible, convulsing, scream-frozen, breath-locked in the grip of magic and memory. He didn't notice his body lifting away from the gritty floor on a cushion of power, didn't notice the silver fire that licked up his flying seed midair and never let a drop touch the stone. All that mattered was the bursting joy, so alien and huge Harry was sure it would leave his heart cracked wide and empty as a dragonshell once it passed. That, and those cold fingers threaded through his own, milking earthquake echoes out of him as Harry tried to remember how to breathe.

"Severus," Harry whispered again, shuddering – a prayer, plea and reverence offered up to the love of his life. The shadows sighed to hear it, stroked at the tears creeping through Harry's begrimed cheeks – forgiving, adoring, absolving the Boy Who Just Kept On Living. Rocked gently, exhausted and oddly comforted, Harry relaxed into the darkness' coils, sighed, and let it carry him away without complaint. He never noticed the changes in the cell's warding spells, or that the shackles and chains binding his wrists had dissolved completely.

~*~

"Get up."

Harry ignored the ridiculous order. Of course he wasn't getting up. Three days on cold stone without blankets or decent food was insult added to the injury of his cracked ribs, rattling lungs, aching head, and fever-hot whip cuts. It would take much more than a command from Draco Malfoy to trump that kind of damage.

"I said get up, Potter. Don't make me come in there and drag you out."

Harry rolled his head to the side, squinted against Draco's greenish _lumos._ The man looked three days dead in that unkind light, eyes shadowed with purple, lips pressed in a thin slash, nerves vibrating across his glare like a plucked string. Even his hair looked limp and unwashed, and for someone with Draco's vanity, that was as telling as it got. Something had broken, something put the wind right up his arse. Harry bet his left arm he knew what.

He managed a smile, felt his dry lips crack. "Be my guest," he croaked.

"Damn it, Potter!" Rattle of keys, grind of the lock disengaging. The light came closer, painful and dizzying in the way it made the shadows spiral around the vaulted ceiling. Harry closed his eyes as his stomach clenched. "What the hell are you playing at?" Draco snarled low, furious, scared.

Harry cracked one eye. "Do I look like I'm playing, Malfoy?"

Crouched like a pale cat on the stones, Draco merely stared. Harry wondered if he'd gotten a good look at his father's handiwork before the House Elves had sealed him away down here. The frustrated worry in his silver eyes seemed to suggest Harry's injuries were news to him. He hadn't known how badly Lucius fucked up.

"Move, slave!" Pansy's voice suddenly filled the cell. Harry winced, turned his face away as she loomed behind her husband and trained a fierce light in his face, "We know you're only faking!" God, how did Draco keep from throttling the woman if she shrilled like that all the time?

As if in agreement with Harry's unvoiced thought, Draco hissed and whirled on her. "Shut _up_, you damned harpy!"

She shocked back a step. "But Papa said-"

"I know what MY Father said, you ignorant cow, and I'm bloody well seeing to it!" Harry watched, interested despite himself as Draco bodily herded his wife out of the cell, "If you want to help, go find me a fucking House Elf! Morgause knows you're useless enough yourself!" Pansy stared for a moment, red-faced at her husband's cruelty, then she fled, sobs echoing down the hallway. "Don't forget the House Elf!" Draco yelled after her.

"So," Harry wheezed, trying and failing to lever himself up onto his elbows, "mail's come today, has it?" Draco didn't turn from the doorway, but his shoulders went very still. "Was it a howler by cross-channel seagull, or did He go straight to an intercontinental banshee courier?"

Draco lit a cigarette, and the flame on his wand-tip wavered as in a breeze. "Worse," he admitted, blowing out a shaky fume, "he sent Aunt Bellatrix."

~*~

 

The room they moved him to was hardly more than a closet crammed up under the manor's attic eaves. There was barely enough space to walk between the wall and the bed, and the door could not be opened without moving the single ladderback chair into the washstand corner. But the room had a tiny window to let in light and the fresh sea air, and it had a proper door instead of an iron grate. Heaven enough for the Malfoy estate, Harry generously allowed as the House Elves finished washing him. He let himself hang, weak as a string-cut puppet until they levitated him into the bed and drew the blankets over.

"Harry Potter is wanting anything else?"

The squeaky voice nearly startled him out of his skin. No Malfoy House Elf had spoken to him since Dobby. Harry knew very well that Lucius had threatened the servants with death by torture if they broke that silence. He flickered a glance at the doorway, where Draco still hovered like a surly ghost in Italian silk robes the colour of pewter. Yes, he was watching, and didn't seem inclined to murder the creature. Harry, perhaps, but not the House Elf.

Then his brain registered the creature's words, and their meaning. Food. And he'd get to choose it. Harry's mind reeled through a sudden orgy of possibilities, from steak to trifle to bangers and mash. His stomach quickly stilled that giddiness with a memory from the aftermath of his last starvation punishment. "Milk, please," Harry decided, "a little bread, and honey." He ignored Draco's snort from the doorway, and allowed himself to relax into the pillow as the tiny creature disappeared. But the weight of that mercurial glower on his face was more than Harry could ignore. "Sit," he sighed, opening his eyes again.

"What?"

Harry pointed at the chair in the corner. "If you're going to hang around, you might as well take a load off." He sighed as Draco made a point of ignoring him and lit another cigarette. "What are we waiting for then?" The blonde gave him an inscrutable sneer and answered with a smoky, disgusted snort through his nose. Harry just knew he'd practiced that trick in front of a mirror, so as to capitalize on his name. "Come on, Malfoy," he croaked, trying not to cough as the acrid smoke filled the room, "you're sure as hell not hanging about here for my bloody company. You've got 'waiting' branded all over your face, and I want to know where the shoe's going to fall."

"It'll fall on your head if you don't belt up, Potter," Draco snarled, but whatever else he might have added was cut off by the reappearance of the House Elf.

"A visitor is come, Draco Malfoy Sir," the tiny creature squeaked as it settled the tray of food in the air next to Harry's bed, "a visitor for Harry Potter."

Now that was interesting.

Draco uncrossed his arms and stood up straight. "At last! Where is he now? Tell me you wretches haven't left him down in the parlour."

"Oh no, Draco Malfoy Sir, Mise is showing them up the back stairs now, just as Sir commanded."

"Them? Damn it, he was to come alone-"

The House Elf squeaked in terror, wrung its hands and backed into Harry's bed, trembling so hard he could feel it through the frame. But before it could speak, a disapproving voice filled the doorway.

"I do not travel without my assistant, young Sir." A man who vaguely resembled a brick wall in a mediwizard's white and red robes appeared at the head of the stairs, all ruddy face and ginger hair, "And to judge by the tenor of your esteemed father's note, you are in no position to complain about it. Now where is my patient?"

Draco went red in the face. "Master Drennan, I believe my father's instructions were specific-"

"And irrelevant," the mediwizard replied, crowding Draco out of the doorway, "favors owed or no, the Minister knows the conditions of my work. If he wants my skills and my silence, then he must accept my assistant as well. Now I'm guessing from the grave-pallor of yon unfortunate that he's the matter at hand?" Draco made a disgusted sound and backed out into the hall to light up another cigarette as the man and the girl filled up the tiny room.

Harry finished his milk and shoved the goblet into the Elf's hands, which were trembling almost too much for it to grip. It managed to tear its eyes away from the giant visitor long enough to register Harry's small shooing motion, and then it was gone with a sparkle and a look of pathetic gratitude. The mediwizard gave only a faint smirk before fixing his attention wholly on Harry, who had neither strength nor inclination to avoid the man's piercing, colourless gaze. Harry did gasp when the man ripped the covers, which had just begun to warm up, off him, but the assistant was there with a warming charm almost immediately. Harry watched the master's inscrutable eyes following the track of his wand down Harry's body, watched them map the bruises and welts with no more show of emotion than a flickering shadow between his eyebrows. Harry felt uncomfortably as though the man knew everything he'd gone through in his life.

"Sit him up, Iris. I need to see his back." The girl moved forward, slid her warm hands around Harry's shoulders and deftly levered him up against her. Harry tried not to notice how soft she was, or the clean, un-perfumed scent of her skin beneath his nose. The comfort of the simple, undemanding embrace was offset by the eerie feeling of the mediwizard's pale eyes combing across his inflamed back. Harry couldn't suppress a shiver when the girl reached around him to lift his matted hair away from his neck. He hadn't felt so naked in years.

"Well, young man," Master Drennan said at last, "I'd admit to some 'curiousity' about the nature of your accident if I thought it would yield any relevant information, but as it is…Young Malfoy!" Harry blinked and grinned to hear the man summoned so imperiously. "You will realize, of course, that this patient ought to be cared for in St Mungo's."

"Impossible."

"Unlikely, at any rate," the mediwizard agreed sourly, "now, if I am not mistaken, the late Professor Snape used to keep a laboratory on these premises?" Harry couldn't suppress a flinch to hear the name spoken aloud. Severus Snape had become the He Who Must Not Be Named of the new generation. The girl's hands tightened on his shoulders.

"Shh," she murmured, laying Harry back into the pillows, "it's alright."

Draco too seemed upset, both by the request, and the ease of the name on the master's lips. "The Traitor used to visit here from time to time, yes, but he never-"

"Oh, calm down, young sir, I'm not fomenting treachery! You've left things go too long, and I'll need some very specified and somewhat illegal potions supplies to put him to rights. And it's no good your grumbling, as you've only yourselves to blame;" he cast a glance back at Harry, "if you will whip a man like that, you ought at least to clean the blood off him before you throw him in the dirt."

"He wasn't-"

"Yes, yes, of course he wasn't," Drennan waved Draco's protests away, "nor raped, nor throttled neither, and Merlin forbid I should even suggest it." Harry blinked, half-delighted at the man's candor, and half horrified. The girl restored his blankets with a tiny frown, not meeting Harry's eyes. "Now I know your father is too practical to have thrown away an entire potioning laboratory just because of a bit of political grime," the mediwizard went on, "so off you get, and show Iris where she can set about her brewing."

The girl got silently to her feet and stood waiting while Draco fumed around his indecision, his narrow face pinched and white-lipped. He glared at Harry as if he wished he would burst into flames. Harry stared back with his best blank face. Finally, inevitably, Draco caved, whirling away in a flutter of silvery robes to stalk down the stairs. Silent as a ghost, the dark-haired girl followed him out of sight.

As the clomping footsteps receded, the mediwizard pulled the tiny chair out of the corner and settled his bulk into it. The chair groaned in horror but held together, to Harry's surprise. "Well now," Drennan said, "first things first; Of course I know who you are, and I rather suspect I know why I find you in such a state." Harry blinked, and Drennan smiled. "I have known the Malfoy family for some time, and yours is not the first 'accident' I have been called in to repair. The worst, so far, I'll grant you, but not the first. Now I know what's expected of us both here – me to heal you, and you to recover. But before we begin, you must tell me plain, Harry Potter: What do you want?"

Harry stilled, sensing a trap in the open-handed question. No matter the man's disarming demeanor, it would not do to forget Drennan was Malfoy's choice of healer. "I don't understand, sir," he managed not to cough around the bruised, arid creaking in his throat.

The master gave him a withering look. "Young man, I know when I am being leaned upon. You wanted to hear your wounds admitted aloud, and, I suspect, to watch young Malfoy's face while he listened to the list. That is a rather reckless desire for a man in your weakened state, but you all but shoved the words out of my mouth just now. Were I a weaker occlumancer, you might have gotten me hexed flat out before I knew what you were up to."

Shocked, Harry struggled to sit up. "I – I swear I didn't mean-" Drennan pressed him back with one hand on his chest.

"Nice to hear, but it doesn't answer the question. What do you want? I can save your life, and even your pretty looks if all goes well, but I smell death on you, and I see it in your aura. I will not waste my time and skills on you if you do not mean be saved." The unspoken addition hung in the air between them – _Neither will I allow my family to suffer for your death._ Harry met the man's pale eyes as steadily as he could, trying to think of a way to be honest and still not betray his plans. His captors could still lock him in a padded, warded room, and all his pains would have been for naught.

"You should leave," Harry said at last, imagining himself 'leaning' on Drennan's thoughts, and hoping he was doing it correctly now that he meant to, "I don't want any one else killed because of me."

Drennan shook his head, lips twitching. "Try again, boy."

"I don't know what you want me to say!" Harry cried, wishing for Draco, Lucius, Narcissa, anyone to come and interrupt the interrogation, give him a reason to go back to the silence of his own planning.

Master Drennan looked at him for a weighing moment, then pushed back both sleeves and turned his forearms up to the light. Neither one bore any trace of a brand or scar. He wasn't a Death Eater. "Then perhaps I shall ask a different question:" Drennan said, drawing his wand from his pocket, and pointing the tip directly at Harry's scarred forehead, "Do you want to live?"

Harry'd seen _Avada Kedavra _countless times in his life, had learned to read the spell in the look of an angry eye, smell it on a tight-drawn gasp, and divine it in the bloodless clench of knuckles around polished wood. Harry thought he knew that Unforgivable more intimately than any other spell – inside out, back of his hand, no fear left of it. But to see those acid shadows lurking in the mediwizard's impassive, steady gaze put lie to that supposition. Harry's heart raced and his breath hitched, rattled, and dissolved into a wracking cough that filled his throat with bitter, salty phlegm. Drennan's wand never wavered, and neither did his eyes. "Your answer, young man?" He asked once the coughing subsided.

"I don't – I don't want to die," Harry managed, hoping it would be enough, "not like that. Please." _Not before I can set things right,_ he added silently.

Only then did the wand lower. Drennan's lips quirked into the flicker of a smile as he reached for Harry's blankets. "Very well then, we shall begin."

~*~

Hands were turning him over, rolling him onto his face, exposing his back to the air.

That was never, ever a good thing.

Harry lashed out, flailing with fist and elbow, scrambling against the fabric swaddling his legs. He clipped something meaty and heavy with his fist, and heard a grunt, but then his fist was caught, twisted, and pinned flat over his head. A second later, someone slapped him hard across the face. It was that incongruity which that shocked Harry's panic loose – no one had hit him with an open hand in years.

Drennan was watching him, bemused and slightly reddened on one cheek when Harry opened his eyes. "I shall take that as a sign you're feeling better," he pronounced, releasing Harry's arm.

Harry swallowed heavily as his stomach rolled. "Ugh. Not especially," he groaned, rubbing at his face. "Sorry I hit you. Didn't mean to fall asleep."

Drennan snorted. "I meant you to fall asleep, though, and that skull fracture of yours agreed with me. Speaking of which," he nudged Harry's shoulder again, "I cannot attend to that whilst you're lying on it. Over you go."

The sheets stuck to his back, and Harry winced to feel the scabs tear free. The smell of the sheets and the mess he was making of them was stronger like this, and it was all he could do to keep from gagging. His hair -- matted, filthy, bloody and rank -- fell over his cheek and Harry couldn't suppress a shudder. _God I wish I could get away with cutting this off!_ He thought, scraping the mess away from his nose as best he could.

Drennan caught his hand, moved it away again. "Patience, boy," came the rumbling voice as his hair was gathered up off his neck, "I was getting round to that." A moment later came the unmistakable sound of scissors, and a methodical tug-and-release along his scalp.

Harry gasped. "Wait, you can't-"

"Can't see what the hell I'm doing with all this in the way, you're right." The cutting continued.

"But they'll-"

"Be so happy I managed to save your life, and so grateful for my silence, they'll pay me well and just dump a _Hirsutaea_ potion over your head once I've gone." Drennan laughed, tossing a hank of knots onto the floor, "Not very clever, are you boy?"

Harry sighed. "Clever? No. That was Hermione. She was the clever one. Always had the answers, or knew where to go look them up. Always knew what to do next."

"Hermione...That would be the deadly terrorist Miss Granger the Daily Prophet keeps going on about?" Drennan chuckled when Harry grunted assent, "Murderess, kidnapper, and shameless wearer of Argyll socks, no doubt. Aye, such as her would have to be clever to stay out of gaol this long."

"Master Drennan?" the assistant girl's voice floated softly into the room, "I've brought the _Aesepticus_ salve." Her following gasp drew Harry's eyes open. She was staring open-mouthed at the floor, and the growing drift of black hair. Her eyes flickered upward, almost outraged, it seemed. Then she met Harry's gaze and shuttered her own with a snap.

"Ah. Well timed, Iris." The mediwizard dumped another clump over the edge, "You may begin with the cuts on his back while I finish here."

_Strange_, Harry thought as the girl hovered in the doorway, _why would her hands be shaking?_

"Well, stop dithering, girl," Drennan snapped, "it's not as if you've never seen worse!" She flinched at his tone, but moved to obey. "Where have you gone and left your escort, anyway?" He asked as she knelt beside the bed and uncovered the jar.

"Arguing with the Widow Lestrange on the second floor landing," she said, dragging two fingers wetly along Harry's shoulder. He hissed as the salve began to burn, but didn't let himself move. "They were quite involved."

"Ah, and the subject of their contretemps?" Drennan turned Harry's face to the wall to cut away the last of his filthy hair.

The girl continued mapping the welts across Harry's back. "Whether Ha...." her touch faltered, then resumed, "whether he should remain here, or be taken to the Lestrange estate for further treatment."

_Jesus, no!_ Harry couldn't help the shudder that wrung through him at the thought. Alone and wandless with Bellatrix the Mad! Give him to a hundred Malfoys first!

"Easy, lad," Drennan rumbled, clipping away the final mats and leaving Harry's scalp cold and vulnerable as an unshelled turtle. Harry reached up, and found the hair that remained was only a couple of inches long -- shorter yet at the back, where his head hurt too much to touch, "that concussion you've got will keep you here for at least a week, and no amount of ranting will change that." He paused as the faint echo of raised voices drifted into the room, then patted Harry's hand. "Now then, you were telling me about this terrorist friend of yours, I believe – Granger, wasn't it?"

The girl's hand jerked away from Harry's back as he whipped his head around to stare at the mediwizard. "What?"

Drennan shrugged, standing to let the girl pull the covers from under him, and expose Harry's legs. "I need you talking for this next spell, and you seemed keen on her. So talk. Wasn't she the one blew up Azkaban last winter, freed all those dangerous criminals?"

Harry hissed as the girl's hands, cold now, resumed their work. "Only part of Azkaban, really, they're rebuilding it already. And Hermione was involved, yes, but I think that job was more Neville's style. He always did have a gift for explosives...just needed a keen mind like hers to work out how to make use of it."

"Neville?"

"Longbottom, sir," the girl muttered.

"Ah. Another wanted felon, and you on a first name basis. Young man, I am beginning to suspect you are not as wholesome as you seem!"

Harry laughed bitterly, and pulled his left arm out from under the pillow. "What was your first clue?" He asked, flashing the brand on his forearm.

Master Drennan laughed loudly enough to make Harry and the girl both twitch in surprise. "These days, that only marks you as a fine, upstanding pillar of society."

_Exactly_, Harry thought, folding the arm to lay his head against the crook of his elbow. The choppy, uneven hair tickled, oddly comforting as he settled. "I doubt Hermione would agree," Harry sighed, "she'd sooner see me dead than wearing the Dark Mark."

The assistant threw the blankets back over Harry's legs with a noisy flourish. "This friend of yours sounds horrible," she observed in a tight voice.

Harry glanced at her as she knelt beside the bed to gather up his shorn hair. "No. She has every right to hate me for what I've done."

"And what crime have you committed?" She snapped, her brown eyes fixed firmly on her task, "Surviving?"

"Iris," Master Drennan lay one of his huge, freckled hands on her shoulder, "go downstairs now, Iris. You need to inform the Malfoy's housekeeper we shall be staying after all. Ask for the green suite, and have the House Elves bring up the bags." The girl looked like she would argue, but then glanced at Harry and nodded instead.

Harry watched her pale robes flicker through the door and down the stairs, then he gave a sigh. "I've offended her," he mused, not entirely certain how.

"Aye," Drennan agreed, "but she'll forgive you. She's just that sort of girl, I'm afraid."

~*~

 

"You must work faster, Alec."

"Lucius, you know better than that."

"I need him out of that bed by tonight, damn you!"

"Then you ought to have called me sooner." A scuffle, a thud against the wall. Harry opened his eyes. "Unless you can heal him yourself, Malfoy, you'd best unhand me."

"You're cosseting him," an edge of nerve made Lucius' voice bright, "I can understand that, given your sensitive nature. It may look colourful now, but let me assure you that brat is as strong as an ox. He always has been-"

"Even an ox takes a lie-down when it's got a hole in its skull, you fool!" Another thud, and this time the door rattled. Harry imagined the massive healer shrugging Lucius off like a child. "You may insist he rise for you to parade him about, and it's possible he may manage to do so, but if you plan on it, then expect Iris and me to be long gone before you so much as get him into his trousers!"

A pause. "Merlin, you're serious."

"Deadly serious. Skull damage causes brain damage, you fool, can you at least grasp that much? Dementia, hallucinations, bursts of wandless magic in reaction to things that may not even be real, emotional instability, magical volatility." Harry blinked, beginning to be a little alarmed himself. "Think carefully about whether you want him sitting at your table while you and your sister-in-law argue over who shall torture him next."

"Damn." Another pause, a long one. "If I cannot produce him within a couple of days, Bellatrix will remove him by force."

"Then she will be the one to kill him." Harry could almost see Drennan shrug. "Problem solved, for you."

"Now who is playing the fool, Alec? If his death mattered so little to our Lord, he would not still be alive, no matter how prettily he suffers!"

"That prophecy nonsense again-"

"Not nonsense," Lucius' voice dropped, becoming tight, angry and smooth. "Our Lord bound him in the Old Way."

"Yes, he showed me his Mark-"

"No, I mean the OLD Way. Trelawney's opiated babble is nothing less than pure truth now, Alec. If that slave dies, all Hell will come looking to find out why."

Well. Wasn't _that_ interesting?

"Then your choice seems clear, Lucius," Drennan answered drily, "do everything you can to keep the boy alive. Give me the time and the space I need to set him to rights and keep that madwoman downstairs for as long as you can manage to do it."

Harry heard Lucius take a deep, shaking breath, imagined him nodding his head. "And the alternative?"

"Start packing."

He barked a laugh, Drennan chuckled and even Harry snickered into his pillow. None could imagine Malfoy walking away from the manor and the elegant, patrician life it represented. The Malfoy family name was a galleon filled with gold and tradition, and if it was to sink, this Captain would go down with it, flinging hexes all the way.

"All right then," Lucius said at last, "You'll have your time. Let me take a look at him and I'll go."

"You've forgotten his face already?" Drennan asked, "Or shall I take this as a vote of no confidence in my work?"

"You may take this," the warmth drained out of Lucius' voice, "as me inspecting my resources. Lestrange may manage to bully her way up here before the night is over. I want to know what she will see."

"Other than the back of my hand?"

"Open the door, Alec."

"He'll be asleep-"

"Open. The. Door."

Harry didn't bother to close his eyes as they came in. The candle burning in the windowsill over his bed cast a dim glow that was comforting, but not exactly illuminating. In the light, Lucius looked elegant but as cold and immovable as winter itself. Only the glitter of alarm in his blue eyes gave him away as he stared at Harry's raggedly-cropped hair. Harry kept his face blank and stared back, trying to remember if Snape had ever mentioned whether Lucius was an occlumancer or not.

"You little fool," he breathed at last. His house robes almost concealed the knotted fist at his side.

"I warned you," Harry croaked in reply, "I told you you couldn't control it."

Lucius' hand flashed forward, startling a twitch from Harry and a nervous rustle from the mediwizard. But then the hand froze, fingers outspread just inches from Harry's face, the candlelight gleaming softly on supple leather gloves. Harry glanced up to find that familiar quirk at the corner of Lucius' mouth – the one he'd worn in Flourish and Blotts when he slipped Riddle's diary into Ginny's cauldron, the one he always gave when his thoughts entertained him and he wanted the world to know, but didn't intend to share.

"You rest now, Harry," he smiled, ghosting his hand over Harry's forehead and the fringe above it, "we will discuss this when you have recovered your strength."

 

~*~

It was easier to do it, Harry realized, when he was asleep. He didn't have to think about what 'leaning' might mean – it just made sense, and he just did it. It was a simple thing to pick up on the warring vortices in the dining room, to divine the threads of selfishness and savageries buried in the dance of polite dinner conversation, and tease them to the surface. Able to let his own aches and worries drift for awhile, Harry was actually rather surprised how easily he tracked the family's thoughts as they circled each other like sharks in a bloody pool.

Lucius read as the most active force in the room; whirling, coaxing, spinning his influence on all present. His thoughts resembled a lightning-fast juggler, a manic octopus, or bloody Hindu God. Harry realized he was relying entirely on his balance and adaptability to carry the evening. He nudged the man to choose a stronger wine than he would have normally done, and to fill his glass more often.

Draco sat at his Father's right side, a pulsing, sullen smudge of defensive anxiety. He hardly knew where to apply himself, wanted to speak, knew he would be shut down, hated it. A strong thread of envy glittered through the young man's thoughts. Harry teased it to the surface, then pressed him to drink deeply as well.

The sisters, he read as opposing swirls of light and colour, Narcissa identifiable from Bellatrix only by the way she would occasionally slap out tendrils of support to Lucius or demand the same from him. There was history there, Harry realized -- a wealth of sisterly slights and unforgivables simmering just below the surface. Added to the already heady brew of power and politics simmering in the dining room -- well, Harry doubted Neville could've outdone it for explosive effect.

_Why couldn't I ever see this before?_ Harry mused, tickling up a strong current of resentment and setting it echoing back and forth between the sisters, _I bet Severus always saw people like this. He could do it without thinking – all those times in Potions class when he knew just what to say to make me crazy, scare Neville witless, or spin R-_ Harry's sleeping mind managed to flinch away from the name just in time to dodge the nightmare flash of guilty memory that always came with it. Heart thudding just a bit louder, Harry distracted himself with a rough dig at Bellatrix Lestrange's seething paranoia, and gave her temper a hard twist.

A part of him, so long buried he'd thought it dead, whispered that he was being cruel. These were the actions of a Slytherin, a dark wizard dishonouring the name of Gryffindor. The thought did give Harry pause, but only long enough to recall the look on Lestrange's face when she'd murdered Sirirus, and how it had been Draco Malfoy who had lured Severus to his death with a show of false contrition and a plea for clemency.

_No, it's not honourable. They don't deserve honour._ And while that thought was a comfort, there was still that small, familiar voice in the back of his head that wondered, _But don't you deserve honourability?_

 

The door creaked open. That tiny, timid noise yanked Harry forcibly back into his skin, where he landed with a convulsive yelp. Master Drennan's assistant gasped and nearly fumbled the loaded tray in her hands as Harry shot upright in his bed. He gaped at her, gulped a breath, then pitched back down with a nauseated groan and clutched his head in both hands.

"God!" He breathed, peeling the sweat-sticky sheet away from his chest, "Couldn't you have knocked?"

She pursed her lips in a prim moue, and hooked the chair over by way of a bedside table where she could set her tray. It was covered with dishes, some of which smelled enticing, while others ... he swallowed again. "Sorry sir," the girl said, "I'll remember in the future."

Great. So he'd offended her again already. Why could he never work out how to talk to girls? Harry dragged himself back to a sitting position, carefully this time, lest he dislodge his head entirely. The girl reached over him for the candle in the window and Harry found himself decidedly _not_ looking at her breasts, which were only inches away from his nose.

"That's quite a row going on downstairs," he said by way of a distraction.

"Seems that way," the girl replied, checking his back in the candlelight, "I'll need to reapply the _Aesepticus_ again after you've eaten. And I've another two doses I've brewed for you as well."

Harry, recalling Snape's doses, only just managed to avoid getting caught with his nose wrinkled as the girl set the tray on his lap. More raised voices sounded faintly from downstairs, and Harry smiled, picturing the Black sisters rolling on the sitting room Aubusson, spitting like cats. He reached for the soup bowl, but the girl twitched it out of his hands before he could get a spoon into it. "Hey!"

"Sorry," she replied, climbing fully onto his bed and unlatching the window, "but you don't want any of that."

Harry watched her throw the soup out over the roof tiles. "Why wouldn't I?" He asked.

She smirked and set the empty bowl back on his tray. "Because I dosed it with essence of scurvygrass, lovage and sneezewort while I was having my own dinner in the kitchens," she replied, settling into the chair, "You'd be surprised how easy it is to get things past the House Elves. All it takes is a few well placed 'thank you's', and the poor things start weeping too hard to notice anything at all."

"Scurvygrass, lovage, and-"

"Causes brash, aggressive behavior, and impairs certain judgmental capacities." As if in answer, another smash echoed up the stairs, along with a decidedly feminine screech. "Master Drennan and I felt it would be better to keep them focused on each other tonight, so they'd leave you alone. Do try the coq au vin. I had some earlier, and it's very nice."

Harry obediently picked at the chicken. "I don't know that I like the idea of the Malfoys and Lestrange with impaired judgment," he admitted after a moment, thinking of the pressure he'd put on all of them to drink deeply, "Say, how do those potions react with alcohol?"

The girl smirked, and settled into the chair to watch him eat. "I wouldn't worry. Master Drennan's down there in case things get too hot."

"He is?" Harry couldn't hide his surprise. He hadn't detected the mediwizard's presence at all, but then he had claimed to be an occlumancer... Harry glanced at the windowsill, and raised an eyebrow. "If you had to throw my soup away so the House Elves wouldn't be suspicious, then how's he getting out of eating it?"

"He's not," she replied, "I just made him an antidote to go along with it. You really aren't very good at this, are you?"

"No," he admitted calmly, willing himself not to blush at her teasing tone, "I was never much use at espionage." _Your eyes conceal nothing, Potter_, Snape had mocked him once, _for anyone who knows how to look... _ He shivered, wishing he had a shirt to cover his bare shoulders now that his hair was gone.

"Oh, I forgot. You're the Dark Lord's Gryffindor hero, aren't you?" The girl said waspishly, her arms folded across her breast. Harry, his mouth full of potatoes, could only reply with a scowl, but the girl didn't wait for him. "You're the one sacrificing yourself for the greater good, and taking one for the team and all that rubbish."

Harry stared, furious to the point of shaking. How dare this chit judge him? How could she know what he went through to save what mattered to him? He held her eyes mercilessly while he slowly chewed and swallowed his mouthful of ashes. "What I am," he said at last, "is the Dark Lord's Executor. What I am is the only man in England with the legal right to use Unforgivable Curses without Ministerial permission." Her eyes glittered with tears in the candlelight, but Harry pressed on, as much for the twist in his own heart as to see the horror unveiled in hers. "What I am is the man who kills Lord Voldemort's enemies. I don't see that making me much of a hero to anyone."

"You..." she swallowed, then covered her nerves by fiddling with the potion doses she'd brought, "You don't seem the type. For that kind of..."

"Murder," Harry supplied, finishing the haricots as if he didn't care. He did care – he wanted to shut the girl's impossible questions up on one hand, and wanted to tell her absolutely everything on the other. He wanted to drive her away, but there was something cleansing about this agonizing conversation. Perhaps nothing more than the fact that in the three years since the position had been forced on him, this was the first time Harry had been able to speak to his true feelings about it without Voldemort silencing him. It hurt to say these things, but in a good way, like lancing a boil.

"Does he hold you under Imperius to make you do it?" He looked up as she uncorked one of the phials and set it by his hand, "Does he force you to stay here, where they do such-" her voice quavered, "such horrible things to you?"

_It's not so bad._ The words were actually on Harry's tongue before he tasted the absurdity of them. It was that bad. It was bad enough that he considered the hope of dying his only reason to live. But he didn't want to tell her that, so he ate a bite of the too-sweet trifle, and changed the subject.

"You _do_ know it's treason for me to even be talking about this with you, don't you?"

She gave a watery laugh. "You've met Master Drennan, do you suppose either of us is very concerned with treason against the Dark Lord?"

To which Harry had to smile and shake his head. "All the same, I'd rather not have to kill you."

She put an open phial into Harry's hand. "Then don't. Drink that one first for your lungs, then the blue one for the bones. After I've salved your back again, then you'll inhale the white fume to make you sleep. Got it?"

He did as she asked, then handed her the tray and rolled onto his stomach. He hissed when she laid the first streak of the cool stuff down, but this time the burn only got worse as the salve settled in as if it had teeth. "Gah!" Harry groaned after a while, "The whipping didn't hurt this much!"

Her fingers stilled for a moment, and Harry cursed himself for mentioning the beating in front of the sensitive healer. "It can't be helped, I'm afraid," she said, resuming her work, "The salve has to dissolve the infected tissue to prevent necrosis. It feels as if it's burning because it is, after a fashion."

She squeaked as Harry scrambled to his knees and whirled on her. "Burns?" He grabbed her shoulders, horrified, "You can't! Burns scar! I'm not allowed to scar!" It wouldn't be Lucius who'd pay if the girl's salve left a mark on him, no matter that his negligence had caused it. Harry's throat clenched at the thought.

"No, I promise, it's just-" she blinked leaning against his hold, "the new damage, it's easier to heal cleanly, and...."

Harry let her go, breathing a deep sigh of relief as he settled stiffly back down onto the bed. But the girl didn't resume her work, and after a moment, Harry heard the unmistakable sounds of stifled tears. Cursing himself again, he half-rolled to face her again. "Hey..." what had her name been? He couldn't recall, so he reached for her gooey hand instead, "I'm sorry I shouted at you. I get what you're doing, okay? And I'm not mad or anything, it's just I have to be careful."

She sniffed, nodding while he awkwardly patted her hand. "I know, it's just-" then a smash and a shout from downstairs made them both jump in alarm. She cast a nervous glance at the door, and sniffed. "You had better let me finish this." Harry complied, making no further comment as the caustic salve burned its way across his arse and legs. The silence downstairs had a menacing quality, and Harry found himself wishing the girl would hurry up and go so he could try and find out what was happening.

"There," she dropped the jar onto the chair and wiped her hands, "it should stop hurting soon-"

But even as she twitched the sheets up over Harry's back, a clattering of shoes filled the attic stairway. The girl hurried to open the door, only to have it fly open and knock her sprawling into the washstand in the corner. Harry pushed himself up at her strangled cry, but before he could turn, a shadowy figure swooped through the door and snatched a handful of his cropped hair.

"Very well," Narcissa Malfoy hissed, wrenching him out of the bed and spilling him at her feet, "if you are so very important to her, then let the bloody harpy have you!" Harry wheezed as his inflamed back scraped across the gritty boards, straining to keep from bashing his head again. "Get up!" She screamed, kicking at him, "Get out of my house, and take that HellBitch with you!"

"Stop it!" Drennan's assistant bolted out of the corner, shoving Narcissa away and dropping to her knees to shield Harry.

"No," he tried to wheeze, "don't-" But the girl ignored him, dragging him up against her. She was totally unprepared for it when Narcissa landed a resounding slap across her face. She fell sideways with a gasp, and Harry found himself being hauled up by his scalp once again.

"Wait," he pleaded as the room gave a horrifying lurch, "wait please, let me-"

"Let him go!" Harry looked up, horrified as the slim, dark-haired girl leapt to her feet, one cheek reddened and scored with nail-tracks, "Leave him alone!"

Narcissa's hand raised again, rings glittering in the candlelight, but before the blow could land, the girl lunged forward and punched the blonde woman in the face. She fell with a screech, tearing a handful of Harry's hair as she did. He yelped and sagged dizzily, blood roaring in his ears. _Concentrate!_ He commanded himself, _you spun her up, now calm her down before she kills someone! _ But try as he might, Harry couldn't make the floor stop bucking underneath him.

He gasped to feel small, strong hands hauling him up from behind, steadying him, and turning him. "Go," he pleaded with the girl as she tugged his arm across her shoulders and wrapped hers around his waist, "run now, before-"

"Shut up! I'm not leaving you-"

"You little COW!" Narcissa's outraged voice startled them both around. She crouched on the bed, golden hair spiraling out of its perfect coif, blood dripping down her chin to spatter her diamonds. Her eyes were wide and dark and icy cold as she stared down the length of her wand at the girl. "How DARE you?"

The girl fumbled for her wand, too late – Narcissa's was already beginning to glow green. Harry gave her a shove toward the door. "GO!"

_"Avada-"_

"NO!"

_"Stupefy!"_ Lucius Malfoy's voice thundered through the room. Harry flinched as the spell sizzled past his ear and struck Narcissa full in the chest.

The blonde collapsed with a surprised chuff, the swirling green of the killing curse sucked back into her wand with thin sort of wail. Harry couldn't help but think it sounded disappointed, and for some reason that thought made him want to giggle. That was shock, probably. He quelled the urge and let the girl walked him back from the doorway, where he leaned against the wall to keep his knees from giving out.

Lucius prowled to the bed, where he stared down at Narcissa for a long moment. Harry watched the man, feeling himself go still inside -- so deeply still that he could almost feel the echoes of his pulse dying down in his fingers and toes. So still, as Malfoy turned his wife's face to the light, that even his trembling knees steadied. He could feel the girl quaking against his side, and gently disengaged her. He needed the stillness more than the support.

"Which one of you struck my wife?" Malfoy's voice was low, tightly controlled. His fingers were bloodless marble clenched around the silver head of his cane.

The girl drew a trembling breath through her nose, but Harry cut her off. "It doesn't matter," he said, willing Malfoy to turn, to meet his eyes. He felt a slight jolt somewhere near the back of his throat when the Death Eater did so, as though a current had opened between them. Harry pushed his stillness out along that current with all his might. "She tried to kill me. You stopped her. Take her downstairs now."

"You..." Malfoy blinked, and his arctic glare lost some of its intensity, "I will not-"

Harry pushed harder. "Master Drennan needs to stop her nose bleeding. Take her downstairs. Now." Malfoy's eyes glazed a little more. Harry gave the current one final shove, holding to his stillness with every ounce of strength left in him. **"Go."**

Somehow he held himself up, straight against the wall while the Dark Lord's deadliest servant obediently levitated his wife out of the tiny room. Then the quaking returned in delicate, cold-sweat tremors as the footsteps retreated steadily down the stairs.

"Harry," the girl – Iris, he remembered suddenly – whispered, "wandless _Imperius_... that was amazing!" He swallowed thickly, eyes closed as he sucked breath after panting breath. The room was beginning to sag again, and drift to the right. "I've never even heard of-"

He dropped away from the wall, trusted gravity take him to his knees. "Harry?" He pitched forward, clawing under the edge of the bed for the chamberpot, and hurling every bit of his dinner into it. She stroked his forehead as he heaved, wiping the sweat away from his eyes, steadying him when his arms shook too much to bear him. And when nothing more would come up, Harry let her haul him back up into the bed and un-twist the sheets to cover him.

"You oughtn't to have done it," she murmured, layering the blankets on as Harry began to shiver, "not with a concussion. God, Drennan will simply murder me for letting you! Who knows what kind of damage you've done to yourself?" Harry didn't reply. She sounded more upset with herself than with him, and anyway, what could he say?

He groaned as another violent shiver wracked him, curled onto his side to bring up his knees. He knew it wasn't as cold in the tiny room as he suddenly felt – he'd been sweating like a pig not half an hour earlier, but now he felt as if he were packed in snow. After a moment, he felt the bed dip and the girl settle herself atop the blankets, up against his back. He sighed, grateful in spite of himself as the weight of her small arm over his shoulder pressed him gently down into sleep.

~*~

 

A hand curled gently under his neck, lifting his head away from the pillow, but Harry was dreaming of weak Northern sun through green bedcurtains and a pale chest breathing deeply under his ear, and couldn't be bothered wake. That changed when a cold glass phial touched his lips, and a low voice murmured "Drink this."

"Mht izzit?" Harry mumbled, turning his face. The acrid smell of the dose crawled into his nose, shaking off the pleasant dream.

"Poison," came the reply.

Harry's eyes flew open, and he jerked away from the gentle hold. "What?!" He demanded as the mediwizard hastily moved the phial clear of Harry's reach.

"Oh good, you are awake," the man smirked, his blue eyes twinkling in a way that made Harry's stomach clench, "How do you feel?"

"Bit worried, actually," he scowled, knuckling sleep from his eyes as his pulse slowed.

Drennan laughed. "Lad, if I wanted to kill you, I'd have done last night, and not woken you for it." He lifted the phial to the weak sunlight from the window, and Harry blinked as the liquid came alive with opaline light. "I simply need you comatose for a few days so I can use deep-healing spells on you without further trauma. Just drink it down for me, and next thing you know, you'll be feeling better."

Harry did not take it. "What is it?" Drennan quirked an eyebrow at him, and Harry set his jaw. "What's IN it? See, I have this personal policy about not drinking unidentified potions from wizards I don't know. Especially when the words 'poison' and 'coma' come up in the conversation."

"Prudent, I suppose," Drennan allowed, giving the potion a little slosh, "It's Acromantula venom. Nothing more. At your weight, I estimate it'll clear out of your system in around fifty eight hours." He offered the phial again. "Satisfied?"

Harry took it, sloshed it, sniffed it again with his eyes closed. The sharp odour did indeed dredge up memories of Aragog's grotto; lanky, hairy shapes that filled up the darkness, Ron's voice crackling with fear as the giant spiders closed in on them.

Ron... Blinded, broken, his every breath a rattling lungful of torment and bloody foam. That ruined face turning at the sound of his voice, the remnant of a hand struggling to rise, himself unable to take it, unable to release the wand, unable to _not_ cast the curse that lurked in the back of his throat.

"Harry?" He startled at the mediwizard's concerned voice, "Something wrong?"

He swallowed, took a deep breath. "I just. I," swallowed again, made himself think. "Where did you get it?" He managed words at last, "The venom, I mean? Who brought it to you" Drennan's eyes flinched and Harry knew he'd guessed right. "Hagrid's here, isn't he? He's in England," he hissed, "And you never meant to use this venom for healing me at all, just to get me out of the Manor's wards!"

"Hold up, Boy," Drennan said, "You've forgotten that there's quite an extensive potion laboratory downstairs. Iris found that-"

"Rubbish," Harry pressed, "Acromantula venom evaporates completely once it's been outside the spider's body for sixty hours, and there is no containment or spell on earth that can stop it."

"Suddenly you're a potions expert?"

"Shared rooms with one for three years, thank you," he replied, feeling the certainty settling into his bones. He was right! He could feel it! "and insomnia will drive a reader to desperate lengths when there's no Dreamless draught to be had." He lifted the phial to the light again. "The only Acromantulas in Europe are up north at the Hogwarts ruins. If you expect this to work on me for fifty-eight hours, then it means someone apparated straight here after procuring it. And I know of only one man in the world who would still be able to apparate after milking a giant spider."

"Let me check that head, lad. You're worrying me."

Harry batted his hands away, still grinning. "Where's your assistant this morning?"

Drennan scowled. "Iris is in the lab, brewing-"

"Wolfsbane potion," Harry cut him off, "I smelled it on her hands last night. Didn't put it together till just now, but after living with the stink every month for three years, I don't think I'll ever really forget it. So that's two of the three. Hermione wouldn't let Hagrid and Lupin do something like this without her, so I'm guessing you've been in contact with her as well, haven't you?" He stared at the mediwizard, willing him to speak, to tell the truth – reaching for that little shock of connection he'd had with Lucius the previous night.

For a moment, he almost thought he had it. Then Drennan gave a growl, and Harry found himself sagging dizzily against the wall, with his stomach knotting and the blood pounding in his temples. "There will be no more of _that_, if you please," Drennan said, steadying Harry by the shoulder, "If your brain were up to that sort of a workout, I'd not need to drug you for the healing of it."

"Then tell me," Harry pleaded, grabbing the man's hand, "tell me the truth!"

Silence, then Drennan looked away. "It'd be a bit redundant now."

A frisson of joy and horror crawled across Harry's skin. They were here, not in France – Voldemort's trap would not catch them, and that knowledge made his bones feel loose with emotion. He had to take a deep breath before he could trust himself to speak. "Tell them – You have to go back to them and tell them they can't do this," he managed at last, "It's not safe. I'M not safe-"

"Hush, boy," Drennan patted his trembling hands, but Harry would not be soothed.

"No, I mean it! Whatever it is they're planning, you can't let them take me-"

"I know, Harry," Drennan caught his chin, forced him still, "I know what you have to do. He told me. I understand. Don't like it much, but I never could argue logic against him."

Harry blinked, utterly derailed. A wash of cold nerve shocked him still and whispering. "He told you?" Stomach clenching, dropping like a stone. "Who told you?"

"Strange, isn't it," the man sighed, leaning back in the rickety chair and ignoring its pained creak, "that such an old place, with such a bloody history as this shouldn't have Ghost wards? You'd think the Malfoys would be hip deep in vengeful shades, but there's really only the one."

"Severus." The name wobbled off his lips. Hearing it was a gut-punch, and a part of him wanted to clap his hands over his traitorous mouth. The letters of it should have burned on his tongue, poured out as a scream, not that white little whisper, and never, ever where another soul could hear.

Drennan nodded sadly. "It seems my old colleague is not at rest even now. A shame, really – if any man had earned his peace, it was him."

"Stop," Harry pleaded, squeezing his eyes shut, "Don't, please don't. I can't...."

He started as the phial was plucked from his shaking hand. "Hush, boy, hush. He knows."

That sound wasn't a sob. It just wasn't. Harry pressed his forehead against the wall and remembered that he did not cry – not for anyone. Never for Snape. He did not cry because if he began, he knew he would never stop.

"Sweet Merlin, child, how do you manage?" Harry blinked, stiffened at the words, but Drennan went on before he could reply. "Just saying his name wrecks you, and yet you spend your life tucked up cozily with the man who killed him. You give interviews and pictures for the Daily Prophet, hold a Cabinet position, all with a Snape-sized hole in your heart. You can't possibly walk about bleeding like this day after day."

"I don't think about him," Harry replied, words precise and careful, "not ever." He sighed at the mediwizard's dubious look, and tried to explain. "Have you ever found a spider in your bath, Master Drennan? Just the little sort of spider that always seems to wind up under the spout, scrambling about when you turn the water on?" Drennan nodded. "Ever just sit and watch him? He'll race up the tiles to get away from the rumbling water – like as not, he doesn't even know what's going on, beyond that it's dangerous. But he's panicking, right? And the tiles are slippery, even for him. So he slips, and he falls, and maybe he catches himself, and keeps trying, keeps slipping, keeps falling, keeps catching himself."

Harry swallowed, remembering his first weeks after the Northumberland Battle, remembering his desperation, his fury, guilt, and terror, and how deftly they were used against him before he learned to lock it up in the back of his heart. Before he learned how to hide behind the shield of his resentment. "Soon he starts to slow down though," he went on, "He's only a little spider, after all, and he's getting tired. He can't keep running, and he realizes he's falling closer and closer to the water. But he keeps trying to climb, just more carefully now, feeling his way."

"He's not planning ahead, that spider, and he's not thinking of his little spider family, or his dinner, or the last time he got shagged. He's thinking about each foot, and just where it goes, and how best to hang on. And that mostly works – he gets higher up. But he still falls, you know? Because it's still so slippery, and he's still so very, very small."

"Why?" Drennan asked, and Harry did not look because he didn't want to see pity in his eyes. "Why would he keep on?"

Harry breathed a laugh. "I don't reckon he knows, exactly. There's nothing up there but more tile, really, and he's no reason to hope otherwise, does he? But it is farther away from the water, and he knows spiders can't swim. I guess he keeps on because he's hoping he'll find someplace where he can rest for awhile – where he can just tuck in and maybe not have to wonder how long it would take him to drown if he fell all the way."

"About eight minutes," Drennan supplied with a faint smirk, "give or take a desperate rescue." Harry snickered in spite of himself, but the mediwizard's smile faded. "You're not climbing anymore though, are you Mr. Potter?"

"No." Harry looked down at his fingers, and carefully un-knotted them from the sheet. "At the moment, I'm just sort of clinging, and trying to catch my breath for what's coming next."

"And what's coming next?"

Harry looked up, steadily meeting the healer's eyes. "Another fall."

A weighing silence, then Drennan leaned forward, holding out the phial of venom once more. "Three days, Mr. Potter," he said, "unmolested, unbroken. Peace for three days running. Will that be long enough to catch your breath?"

Harry touched the glass with a fingertip. It was unnaturally cold, steaming minutes of oblivion away while he watched. "What happened to not wasting your time on me if I wasn't going to survive?" He challenged.

The mediwizard shrugged. "It seems you've an important job to do, young man – one the world has expected of you since your first birthday. Who am I to stand in your way now that you're poised to actually do it? Iris will not understand, poor girl, but I do." He put the phial into Harry's hand, wrapped his fingers firmly around. "Three days. Just do one thing for me."

"What's that?"

"Do not fail."

~*~


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry in the grotto. Illustration.


	6. La Mort Par Une Chute

Harry awoke to several sensations he'd not felt in a very long while. First there was the late-morning sunlight across his face like a warm swath of silk. Sunlight pouring like golden syrup through tall windows, gilding the elegant massive, white draped four-poster bed in which he lay.

_Huh. Not in the attic._ He thought, slowly becoming aware of the delicious, unfamiliar lassitude in his body – no tension, no worry, no pain. Harry couldn't recall the last time wakefulness had found him without a sense of foreboding, but this morning seemed to bring nothing but the comfort of a lie-in and the linen-and-lavender-scent rising from the duvet. The warmth and decadence almost dragged him back down into slumber.

But then a colder sensation sliced through his doze; Voldemort was hunting for him. Harry's eyes opened, sharply focused, fully awake now. This wasn't the pinned-down and stripped bare regard he had come to know in the last three years. This was a creeping, neck-stiffening sensation, as though a dementor sniffed blindly after him, its rotten fingers swiping through empty air just inches from his face. That voice Harry had lived with so constantly now hissed at the edge of his thoughts, calling after him in honeyed, summoning tones which to Harry's surprise, found no echo in his waking mind.

The sound/thought washed over him and away while Harry lay still, confused, bemused, and baffled to find himself so unmoved. That stillness welled up inside him again, deeper than the one he had used to turn Lucius. It felt utterly strange, like flying without a broomstick, or casting magic without his wand. _Which you already did._ Harry blinked to remember. Then he recognized the stillness; it was the absence of fear -- as if the furious, fighting part of him was still envenomed and comatose, leaving the Dark Lord alone in the darkness they used to share. Meanwhile, the rest of him slowly awoke to sunlight and birdsong and the whisper of waves on the beach below the cliff.

And that thought in itself was intimidating, and Harry made himself consider it carefully. "How much power have I given you just by fighting against you? By fearing you?" He mused to the fading, frustrated parseltongue whispers, "How much of myself have I lost?"

As if in reply, he felt the Dark Mark give an achey twinge, and the forehead scar answer with a wriggling itch. Harry caught his breath, on the brink of steeling himself against capture, invasion, subjugation, slavery. _Severus said the bindings would fade with distance, but what if he was wrong? What if He's come back for me? What if he takes me before I'm ready for him? _

Self fulfilling, Harry's glitter of panic drew the searching heat nearer. _Fear. _ He realized, and at the naming of it, the stillness inside him welled up like a bubble of laughter, and smothered it dead. Both scars becalmed at once, and Harry found himself awed, and more than a little apprehensive as Voldemort's aura faded.

"It can't be that easy," Harry warned himself, trying to be stern. And yes, the Mark was still on his arm when he checked, glaring angrily black against his skin. It ought to have hurt terribly at that colour, ought to have had him delirious with pain, but it was only a little hot, perhaps ticklish a bit. Harry stared at the Morsmordre for a full minute before he realized what else was missing -- the twist of guilt and revulsion the sight of his branded arm had always triggered in him. Somehow the bright morning unmade the Dark Mark a little -- it wasn't a failure, or a prison, or a betrayal – it was only a gleaming twist of scar tissue on his forearm.

And Harry, he realized suddenly, was only a man whose bladder hadn't been emptied in three days -- far more pressing a matter than shadowy specters in the back of his haunted mind. So it with smugness unparalleled that Harry turned a deaf ear to the Dark Lord, and went to have a piss.

They'd re-grown his hair while he slept, Harry discovered. Black spikes poked every which way, falling in a fringe over his forehead, and just tickling the bottom of his neck. _His_ hair, Harry Potter's hair, not Lord Executor's mid-back mass of waves. Harry stared, a goofy grin spreading across his face while the sink filled with water. "All I need now's my glasses," he murmured.

His reflection sniffed. "Nothing wrong with those eyes, young man. There's no call for Muggle affectations." Harry just shook his head at the inherent snobbery of all things Malfoy, and ducked his head into the sink.

One shaving charm, one tooth-cleaning charm, and a drenched, and mightily offended mirror later, Harry returned to the main room of the suite to find that the House Elves had left food for him. Taking a cue from his last request for food, they had kept the fare simple; bread, honey, soft cheese, tea, and milk – all in such restrained portions as must have broken their generous little hearts. His bed was made but turned down, and they had also left a red velvet robe and a pair of pajamas draped over the chair that faced the massive marble fireplace.

That proved how much had changed in the three days he'd been asleep. More than the food, more than being moved to the guest suite, more than being allowed to wake unattended, or given access to the bathroom's maintenance spells, the clothing was tacit permission to cover himself, no longer to keep himself available and vulnerable. A brief search revealed more clothing in the wardrobe and trunk, all of which looked a likely fit for Harry. There were even shoes. Things had changed indeed, he mused as he pulled the pajamas on. Now he needed to work out _how_, and what the changes would mean to his plans.

Those concerns evaporated when a single, accidental brush of his fingers against the Morsmordre flooded Harry's mind with a chilling awareness of Voldemort – thought, plot, and feeling.

Horrified, Harry staggered, yanking his hand away from the Mark as he fell into the wing-chair with a gasp. As though a switch had been flipped, the contact winked out. Harry sat carefully still, willing his heart to slow, willing his lungs to fill, empty, and fill again.

Nothing happened. No searing attention split his solitude open, no soul-deep imperius jerked his leash to heel. Gradually it occurred to Harry that he had been aware of Voldemort's thoughts, not the other way around.

_The binding works both ways, Harry,_ Severus had said, _Both ways._

Trembling, Harry's fingers crept back to the brand, hovered above it for a moment, then descended. The connection poured over him again, rattled him with its volume, intensity and strength, but Harry closed his eyes, held fast and waited for the chaos to settle into sense. It wasn't like legillimency – this came with no push, no dizzying rush of pictures, sounds and sensations. This was just a sort of _knowing _of Voldemort's psyche that was at once simple, and impossible to define. Things were real, proven fact to the Dark Lord's reality which were totally alien, and ridiculous to Harry -- and not all grand things like attitudes about muggles and halfbreeds, either. Little things, like what trust meant, what pain meant, what to do with either. Subtle, pervasive things, so tiny and sticky that Harry found himself almost getting used to them as he mapped the spiraling threads around him. He quickly began to feel grey, as though he swam through greasy smoke that would cling to his mind, and taint his thoughts for the rest of his life.

_No! Too deep!_ Harry broke the link again, sloshed tea all over the saucer as he juggled the cup to his mouth and emptied it with a gulp. Breathing became very important, requiring all his attention to keep it from turning into a thin, nervy whine in his throat. Food. Eating would help. He reached blindly, stuck his thumb in the butter, and shook his head back into focus.

"Slow. Take it slowly," Harry told himself aloud, taking up a slice of toast with careful fingers, "slowly, like he did it with you." The Gryffindor in him wanted to crash into his enemy's thoughts like a storm, kick the footings out and crush the crystal underfoot, but Harry knew better. He couldn't hurt Voldemort mind to mind – the Mark wouldn't allow it, even if the soul bond would. "You don't need to see his soul," Harry murmured, soothing his rattled nerves with the little rituals of breakfast, "just his plans, a bit of his thinking – just enough to get around him." He chewed his toast, stirred sugar into his tea with a trembling hand. "It'll be no worse than dodging Snape after curfew back at school," Harry swallowed, not as convinced as he wanted to be, but not ready to turn his back on this discovery either.

He finished his toast, had a second piece more for evasion's sake than because he wanted it, and then, before he could come up with more reasons not to, Harry rolled up his left sleeve, and let the Dark Mark lead him into the Serpent's darkest lair.

~*~

"What are you doing?" A low voice intruded on his reverie, smoothly prying open Harry's silence, and luring him back to the surface.

He took a deep breath, smelled Earl Grey tea, something sugary, and a warm, resinous cologne. "Staring into the abyss," he told Lucius Malfoy without opening his eyes or stopping his fingers' restless tracing.

A snort, gently amused. "A bit redundant, don't you think? It seems to me you've done nothing else since you arrived here." A rustle of movement, and then Harry felt gloved fingers close about his right hand and lift it away from his left arm.

"Some abysses are deeper than others," he replied, opening his eyes as Voldemort's restless thought-echoes faded away. Lucius released his hand, and sat back in the facing wing chair, flipping back the swath of ivory hair that had fallen over his shoulder. "What are you doing here?" Harry asked him.

"I do live here, Potter," Lucius smirked, "and even the guest suites are mine."

"Fine," Harry rolled his eyes and stifled the urge to stretch and yawn, "Then what am I doing here?"

"Staring into the abyss, apparently," Lucius crossed his legs at the knee, looking wholly at ease save for one bouncing foot, "The House Elves reported that you awoke when expected, but have been sitting there all day, ignoring every meal they've brought you. Hardly encouraging, given your recent condition. However, seeing as how you were not incapacitated, but merely navel gazing, perhaps you'd like to gratify their efforts by partaking of tea now?" Harry followed his graceful gesture to find the table loaded with pastries, half a dozen covered dishes, and tea service for two. He thought about refusing, but a second later, a House Elf appeared to load the plates and pour the tea. Apparently the question had been rhetorical.

"Where's Drennan?" Harry asked to cover his stomach's enthusiastic gurgle as the smell of the food reached him, "I'd think you'd have sent him if you were worried about me."

Malfoy sipped his tea. "Why should I send him when my own eyes work?" He replied, "I have known you long enough to judge for myself whether you require care or not."

_That boy is as strong as an ox!_ Harry remembered him saying, and smirked. "Why should you come yourself when you loathe the very sight of me, is the real question, Malfoy." He ate a bite of steak pie, then answered his own question when it became clear that Lucius didn't intend to. "You're here because you want something from me. Something you can't get without asking for it."

Lucius didn't bother to deny it, merely gave Harry a weighty stare over the rim of his teacup. "Very well then, let us be plain about it," he said at last, "Severus Snape was one of the best occlumancers born in my lifetime." Harry stiffened at the name on Malfoy's lips, but managed to close his teeth on a biscuit before any growl escaped him. "You, as his student and…apprentice, must have learned the art from him. Am I correct?"

"No," Harry heard the words escape through his clenched teeth, "I was not his …'apprentice', I was his lover. And your SON, on your orders, lured my LOVER to his death. If you wanted anything from me, Mr. Malfoy, reminding me of that was NOT the way to go about getting it!"

"Calm down, boy," Lucius said, summoning the teapot to refill his cup, "this is no time for sentimentality. He taught you occlumancy – yes, or no?" Breathing hard through his nose, Harry merely glared until the blonde sighed. "Potter, I am deft enough at legillimency to test you myself if you will not answer my question."

"He taught me," Harry relented at last, "but I was never any good at it, and I haven't been able to do it at all since…." He held out his left arm, displaying the Dark Mark.

Lucius frowned. "But you have not attempted it against any save our Lord?"

"No one else has attacked me," Harry shrugged and took another biscuit.

Lucius sipped his tea, ate a finger sandwich, and thought. "I believe Bellatrix Lestrange will do so when she sees you tonight," he admitted finally, "and you must resist her at all costs. You must not allow her to examine your memories of this past week."

Harry stared, then he laughed. Hard. "You're asking me to cover for you? After you nearly killed me?"

"Do not try my patience, you insufferable brat," Lucius hissed, "not when your complicity in those events is so obvious! You knew what was required of you, you understood the consequences, and you made your own choices!"

"Oh yeah?" Harry leaned forward with a grin, "Then if your nose is so clean, what are you trying to hide, Minister?" Malfoy stared at him, lips pressed thin and white with anger. Harry stared back, then finally shook his head. "Damn, he's got us well trained, hasn't he?" Lucius blinked, confused, and Harry sighed. "Voldemort, I mean. He sets us up to hate each other, to fight each other, and we never disappoint him. Hadn't you noticed? Any time one of us gets too stable, he throws the other one in the way just to fuck things up."

Harry's words struck Malfoy like a lightning bolt. There was no hiding the startled realization in his eyes, or the doubts and suspicions that came boiling up behind the simple truth. "I just put it together today," Harry said, resisting the urge to stroke his left arm again, to peer into the Dark Lord's sticky thoughts, and be sure of what he's seen, "He's been using me to keep you in check this past three years, and I didn't notice it until now."

Malfoy frowned. "Don't be ridiculous. Perhaps he uses _me_ to keep _you_ in check, but my Lord has no reason to sabotage my endeavors. Time and again, I have proven myself trustworthy-"

"No one is trustworthy to him," Harry cut in, "not even me, and you KNOW how deeply he bound me – wand, word, and body. He's afraid of us both, that's why he wants us fighting, focused on each other. You're what he uses to keep me from breaking free of him, and I'm what he uses to keep you from turning against him. All neat as you please, and we never see it coming."

Lucius finished his tea and set the cup aside. "This conversation is beginning to sound like a proposal, Mr. Potter."

Harry smirked. "I thought it was a proposal all along, Mr. Malfoy. I'm just throwing a few other things onto the table before we negotiate."

"I see no need for negotiation. Whatever you may think of your treatment here, I promise that should you give Bellatrix Lestrange the leverage she needs to remove you to her estate, you will find yourself much the worse for it."

"I know," Harry nodded, "I've heard what she does with those dogs of hers, and yeah, it's disgusting, and no, I don't want any part of it. But if you give Bellatrix Lestrange the leverage she needs to remove me from your estate, she'll use that to wreck you. She'll never let anyone forget that you couldn't be trusted with Voldemort's property. How long do you figure you'll hang onto the Ministry after that?" Malfoy glowered, but Harry held up a hand. "There's something else you should know about too. That little dance Voldemort's got you and I in? Well Bellatrix is part of it now." He leaned forward as Lucius raised one doubting eyebrow. "You think she's only here because of what happened to me? Well you're wrong. She would have shown up anyway. She was under orders to come while I was here, just to throw you off step, and to frighten me. He wanted her here to keep us both busy while he was away."

"Prove it." That wasn't a challenge, but a demand.

Harry was ready for it. "Where's my wand?"

"If you think I will allow you-"

"No, I'm not asking for it, I'm just asking if you know where it is," Harry interrupted, "My bodyguards always hand it over to you before they leave -- I'm not supposed to see that, but I know the drill. This time they didn't." Malfoy's brow furrowed as he remembered the same thing. "You won't find it in my luggage either, because I watched my valet pack that bag, and my wand was not in it. But if you were to search the Widow Lestrange's luggage, you would find it, because she brought it with her. I felt it," Harry answered the question unasked, "when she arrived. I know it's here, and I know she's got it. She's got it, because she was meant to be the one to return it to me once Voldemort is through with his Continental charade. Not you."

And there was that lightning-struck expression again. Lucius leaned back into the wing chair, steepling his fingers while he thought.

Harry let the silence lie, wondering briefly if it would help to reveal any of the long term plans the Dark Lord had for the pair of them. He decided against it – he could never convince Malfoy that Voldemort meant to hand him over to Harry as a bed slave, or that Harry himself would have been trained to like it by then, his morals whittled away in long, grinding years of captivity and degradation. It horrified Harry to know just how far into the future Voldemort's plans sprawled and how plausible they all were when considered step by step. If the Dark Lord had been an animagus, he would have been a spider.

"So that brings us back where we started," Harry said at last, wary of letting the gravid thoughts whelm him again, "You need me to conceal what happened, and I need you to keep me here until Voldemort returns."

Lucius looked up, his wintry eyes flashing something almost like gratitude for Harry's interruption. "Yes, of course."

"But the information I've given you is valuable," Harry added, "I want something in return for it."

Lucius rolled his eyes. "Let me guess; a truce – that no more harm should come to you whilst you remain here?"

"Of course not," Harry said, "I know what's expected of you where I'm concerned. You couldn't lay off me even if you wanted to."

"What then? Do you imagine I will join forces with you? Become your ally in some valiant insurrection against the Darkness?"

Harry laughed out loud, as much at the tone of Malfoy's voice as at the suggestion. "You kidding? I'd have to trust you then, and believe me, THAT will never happen. I'd call you my one true love before I'd ever call you my ally!"

"Well what then?"

Harry smiled. "I just want you to think about something – to remember it whenever you make a decision about me. I want to know that you remember who your real Master is."

Lucius' brow darkened, and his eyes went steely with pride. "And whom do you suppose that to be?"

"Lucius Malfoy," Harry replied, settling back into the wing chair smugly, "with everything he represents."

Another silence descended, but this one ended in a bark of laughter from Lucius. He unfolded gracefully from the chair, twitching his robes straight and summoning his serpent-headed cane smartly to his hand. "Supper is at eight, Mr. Potter. Clothing has been provided, and the House Elves will advise you if you are uncertain as to your attire. Do, please, try to be prompt."

"I'll clear my schedule," Harry deadpanned, earning another laugh before Malfoy swept from the room.

~*~

Things finally came to a head over the sorbet.

Narcissa flung her spoon down, cutting her sister's words off in the clatter. "Bella, it may be your habit to discuss gross anatomy over dinner, but I do not find it an appropriate topic!" Her frustrated glare took in Drennan as well. "I do not wish to hear how much force it requires to crack a skull, or the ways it can be achieved! Not whilst I am eating!"

The brunette's eyes flashed. "Then by all means, allow me to pose a more fitting topic, sister dear," she hissed, glaring about the table like a basilisk, "Such as what an insult it is to be shabbily lied to by a liar who relies on idiocy in his listeners!"

Harry glanced at Lucius, who raised one eyebrow and shrugged. "Well, when one's listeners are reliably idiotic…" he replied, returning his attention to his dessert.

"Shut up," Draco hissed as Pansy tittered too loudly.

"Oh yes," Bellatrix rounded on the younger Malfoy with a hard glare, "There has been rather a lot of that in this house lately. Quite a lot of shutting up, quite a lot of conspicuous holes where the truth ought to be." Draco recoiled a little at the manic gleam in her eyes, but managed a glower of his own in reply. Bellatrix did not see it, however – her regard had moved on. "Do you think me deceived by your clumsy games?" She demanded of Lucius.

He smirked. "What I think of you, Sister-by-law, is another topic unsuited to dinner conversation." A twitch of his fingers sent a charmed dish across the table to hover before her. "Nuts?" Malfoy offered.

With a snarl, the woman slashed her wand through the air, and the dish exploded. Draco swore, Pansy squeaked, Drennan shoved back out of range as nuts and shards of china flew wide. Harry snitch-grabbed an almond out of the air before it hit him in the eye. Beside him, Narcissa shot to her feet, wand out and furious. Bellatrix dropped into a dueling crouch at once, and Harry got ready to dive for cover.

"Narcissa," Lucius' cold voice cut through the room, drawing all eyes to him as he patted his mouth with his napkin and set it aside, "Sit down." She opened her mouth to protest, but Lucius cut her off. "I will not tolerate you scrapping like a sailor, Wife, no matter that your sister seems to lack better manners. Now. Sit. Down."

White faced and trembling, she did so, leaving Bellatrix alone on her feet, wand out, and nonplussed. Her face darkened as she realized the manipulation, but Drennan stood up before her rant could begin. "Lucius, I believe my patient has had enough for one evening. He should be resting now."

Lucius looked from the mediwizard to Harry. "Are you fatigued, Mr. Potter?" He asked silkily, "Do you need rest?"

"Actually," Harry managed to deadpan, "I feel fine. Not tired at all." Drennan gave him a hard look, which Harry returned with a grin. "What can I say? You do good work."

Draco made a disgusted noise, and shoved back his chair. "I've had enough of this," he began.

"I believe I'm finished as well," Lucius smoothly cut off his son's retreat with a directing wave of his arm, "Let us retire to the lounge for Port." Draco, not quite daring to make faces at his father, sighed and went to open the doors.

"Very well," Bellatrix said as the rest got up from the table, "Go and enjoy your Port. My servants shall collect Mr. Potter's things, and we will be on our way without further delay."

"Hang on," Drennan began.

Lucius' most dangerous voice cut him off. "Careful, woman. Potter was entrusted to my care-"

"Then you ought not to have betrayed that trust with carelessness," she responded. Her face, worn at the best of times, settled into a ghoulishly haggard expression of triumph that made Harry's stomach give a lurch. She had looked just so when she murdered Sirius. "I have the truth of it despite you, Lucius Malfoy," she went on, "I have the truth from other lips than yours."

Harry glanced to Drennan, and so did Lucius, but the ginger- haired giant merely stared at Bellatrix as though she'd grown a second head. "What are you wittering on about?" He asked her, "Who's been telling you what nonsense?"

Smug looked as unflattering on her as triumph did. "How readily you all forget House Elves!" Bellatrix said. From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Narcissa go white, and behind her, Pansy's hand creep up to cover her mouth.

"House Elves?" Harry asked, doubtful, "Maybe you haven't heard the story, Mrs. Lestrange, but the Malfoy House Elves tend to be a bit…"

"Unreliable," Lucius said.

"Stupid," from Draco.

"Imaginative," Narcissa.

"Filthy little liars!" Pansy jumped in.

"…Excitable," Harry finished his own sentence, "If you're basing your assumptions on what they think they saw, you're probably going to wind up regretting it. And anyway," he twitched his robes straight and headed for the Lounge, "I'd rather like some Port myself."

Bellatrix laughed, and caught his arm as he passed. "And Port you shall have, _Pet!_" She oiled, winding both her hands around Harry's elbow and clinging like a vine, "I have an excellent cellar, you'll find." Harry stiffened, but managed not to jerk away from her as the Malfoys exchanged outraged looks around him. "Best resign yourself, love," Bellatrix petted his hand and beamed at him, "It's not as if you've any choice, after all."

This time Harry could not resist the anger that surged through him. He grabbed her petting hand twisted, wringing a startled gasp from the woman. "Actually," he ground, feeling her wrist bones creak in his grip, "I do have a choice. Voldemort may have bound me, but this Mark on my arm never meant I had to do what you say, Bellatrix Lestrange!" Then he flung her away from him.

"Bella!" Narcissa cried as her sister slammed into the wall, "Wretch! How dare you-"

"Shut up!" Harry snapped at the blonde, "Just shut up for once, will you?"

"Lucius!" She turned for support, found none.

"Yes, Narcissa, please do," her husband said, looking down the length of his wand at Bellatrix, who had her own wand trained firmly on Harry's chest, "Your sister seems to have a choice to make."

A flicker of white drew Harry's eye as Drennan added his wand to the balance. Voldemort's pet madwoman didn't notice; the wand in her hand never wavered. Harry gave it a second look, and almost smiled. _Eleven inches. Holly. Phoenix feather core._

"You're using my wand," He warned.

"It will serve me better than you, I'll wager," she replied, flicking her dark eyes at Malfoy, once, then again.

The third time she did it, Harry lunged, reaching past the wand to bind her hand in his own and wrench it backward. This time the wrist bones did more than creak. Bellatrix went to her knees with a howl, and a moment later, Harry had his wand pressed tightly under her ear, a handful of her scalp, and her full attention.

"In case you're wondering," he growled as she cradled her shattered wrist to her breast, "I've learned a lot about _crucio_ since the last time I cast it on you."

"LUCIUS!"

"That will do, Mr. Potter," Malfoy's tone made it clear which way his wand was pointed now.

Harry took another long look at Bellatrix's waxy skin and pain-bright eyes, and then stood upright with a smile. Narcissa looked fit to murder him, her fingers clenched and bloodless at her sides. Lucius looked angry and no little wary, as though he'd found a snake in his shoe and couldn't tell yet if it were venomous. Drennan looked severe and worried. Pansy looked patently horrified, both fists shoved against her mouth as she hung in Draco's shadow, and Draco looked… strangely excited. His grey eyes were bright, and a flush stood high across his cheekbones.

"So," Harry ventured, "No chance of any Port then?"

~*~

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Potter?" Draco waited until they reached the second floor landing to explode, fisting Harry's borrowed robes and slinging him sidelong into one of the sofas that lined the gallery, "If Aunt Bella doesn't kill you, Mother sure as hell will! Why the fuck would you give up your wand? Father couldn't have taken it, not with that Mediwizard there," Draco loomed over him, pale and angry. "What stupid Gryffindor cock-up are you planning?"

Harry, his forbearance all used up for the night, surged back to his feet, and went nose to nose with the blonde. "What's wrong with me?" He snarled, "Good question, Draco – what could possibly be wrong with me? Oh! I know! How about 'I've waited eight years for the chance to break something on that bitch, and I'm just sorry it couldn't have been her neck!" Harry jabbed the Draco in the chest, and though shorter, still managed to poke the Death Eater back a startled step. "Or how about this one – I'm sick of taking SHIT from your goddamn family! I don't have to be planning anything to decide I've had enough of being your fucktoy!"

Draco sneered and shoved Harry in return. "Aww, is poor ickle Potty sad? Does the Boy Hero need a big hug?" His cheeks stained fiercely red, face twisted with contempt, "Tough! You backed the wrong side, didn't you Potter? You and Dumblebore lost your little war, and lost it proper! You ought to be glad to take whatever we give you!"

"Think so?" Harry showed his teeth, "Maybe you ought to reconsider the meaning of 'glad' -- either that, or try a dose of this shit yourself, you spoiled little prat!" He laughed, reckless at Draco's wide-eyed outrage, "I'm sure you'd be _glad_ of a couple weeks of getting chained up, cut up, beaten up, and assraped whenever some tosspot's feeling politically insecure!"

Draco was going to hit him. Harry could see it as plain as if a wand were writing it in fiery letters over the blonde's head. He was going to hit him, and once he began, he wouldn't stop until someone pulled him off. And it wouldn't even take a single mental nudge from Harry -- just words. It had never taken more than that between them.

"Come on then, Draco," Harry brushed imaginary lint off the blonde's shoulder, just to see him flinch, "you've always wanted to know what it's like to be me -- now's your chance to find out."

"You're mad!"

"I'm right," he insisted, "you've been on about it since Hogwarts! All that crap about the 'famous Harry Potter', those stupid buttons in the Tri-wizarding tournament -- you even bought your way onto the Quidditch team just so I wouldn't have something you didn't!"

Draco backed up, not quite hiding a furious tremble. "I've got plenty of things you don't -- I always had!"

"I know. That's what makes it so utterly fucked up that you're still-" he poked Draco's chest, "jealous of me!"

"You're still the Famous bloody Harry Potter, aren't you?" The blonde hissed, his silver eyes fever-bright in the gloom, "You're a _slave_, and everyone still knows your fucking name! I still have to look at your face in the paper, and listen to bloody idiots wittering on about you at parties. 'Oh, you know Harry Potter? What was he like at school?'"

"And I'll bet you give them gory details, don't you Draco?" Harry laughed, shook his head, "If you really held me in contempt, one would think you'd have forgotten all that nonsense by now."

"I can't, can I? Not allowed to, because everywhere I look there you bloody well ARE!" Draco's voice echoed along the marble gallery, stirring a few of the dozing portraits around them. Harry whispered a silencing charm as a door opened below, but Draco didn't seem to notice. "You're a fucking piece of property, and yet somehow, it's still all about YOU! You murder people in public, and they swoon over your tragic image! You're a war trophy, but you attend cabinet meetings even my Father can't get into!" He fisted Harry's robes, shaking him roughly, "You are a goddamn slave, Potter, but you just broke Bellatrix Lestrange's wrist and you GOT AWAY WITH IT! Anyone else in the world wouldn't have walked out of that dining room alive -- not even me! My mother should have cursed you dead on the spot, and my Father should have bloody well applauded, but they didn't, and they're not going to, because it was YOU!"

"Because they wish they'd the balls to have done it themselves, more like," Harry replied, sweeping his hands up between Draco's to break his hold, "But this isn't about your mother, and it isn't about your father -- neither of them are jealous of me. This is about Draco Malfoy's poor little under-fulfilled ego."

That cracked it. Draco lunged, and Harry dodged away, grinning as the aubusson carpet rutched up under his shoes. "So why don't you tell me, Draco, because I've always wondered, just what is it that you DO do? Other than minioning, that is? Did Papa buy you a meaningless deskjob at the Ministry, or just set you up with a portfolio so you could just carry on being a spoiled little Rich Boy?"

"SHUT UP!" Draco grabbed for Harry, trying to trap him against the sofa, but Harry jumped over a low table, laughing as a crystal vase shattered in his wake.

"Do you help Mummy and Pans out with their Witches' Auxiliary luncheons, or just lie around sulking all day because nothing better's fallen into your lap?" Harry swept his arm, knocking aside Draco's wild punch. The trailing end of his sleeve whipped across the blonde's face, and sent him reeling back with a curse. Harry laughed again. "That's what's got your Slytherin ambition in a twist, isn't it? The fact that you don't have any! That's why it drives you mad that I'm Harry Potter, and you're just a Malfoy!"

"Don't you dare say it like that, you filthy halfbreed!" Harry ducked as Draco heaved a small bronze bust at him, "Your blood isn't fit to stain our dungeons-"

"You're just a Malfoy," Harry went on, "like a hundred other Malfoys, only less important. You aren't a patch on your Father, and you know it -- and what's more, your father knows it, and your wife knows it, and Voldemort knows it too." A book came flying this time, its illustrations shouting faintly as it skimmed past Harry's ear, "You're never going to be what Lucius is -- your only chance was to get away from him, to leave that Malfoy name behind and make one for yourself, but when we offered you that chance, you used it to kill the most brilliant man you ever met instead!"

"I was LOYAL!" Draco screamed, vaulting the table to charge at Harry again.

"And how's that working out for you, then; being Loyal and pointless and pathetic?" Harry hooked a chair with one foot and kicked it at Draco as he backed toward the open stairwell, "You had enough groupies in school; you should remember that ass kissing never gets you anywhere unless you're really valuable! You have no right to blame me for your wasted potential!"

"He valued me!" Now the voice was thick and choked, Draco's ice-blonde hair curtaining his eyes as he flexed and clenched his hands in the empty air at his sides. "I did things for him no one else could -- used my influence, got things for him, information he needed! I gave him-"

"You gave him Snape," hatred put an edge to Harry's voice, and made the picture frames tremble against the walls, "which he never would have gotten without you. And what did Voldemort give you in return?" Harry rocked on the balls of his feet, the gallery's fragile railing in the corner of his eye, and the stairwell's echoing void at his back. Close now, very close to the breaking point; just a matter of moments, really. "He gave you a mask to hide your face under, and he gave you a Mark just like a thousand others."

Draco looked up again, his eyes blazing as Harry laughed in contempt. "You knew what the bloody Death Eater uniform looked like when you signed on, you tosser -- you knew, but you still jumped right in line first chance you had! You went from Draco Malfoy to faceless minion, and it's entirely your own fault!" Harry snared Draco's eyes with his own, pinned it down as fury flared his pupils wide, eclipsed the silver with black. He did not glance at the attenuated fingers curling around that heavy glass ashtray. "You got everything you asked for, Draco -- it's not my fault if you feel cheated now."

And then he turned his back on the Death Eater, and reached for the banister, just as if he meant to climb to the next floor alone.

There was a breath -- a tight-drawn hiss through the nose. There was a rustle, and a footfall. There was a flash of green glass sparkling in the corner of Harry's eye. Then there was an explosion of stars, a sickening crunch at the side of his head, and the feeling of space lurching out from under him.

Stunned boneless, Harry could only grunt and wheeze as gravity rattled him down along the sweeping marble staircase, shattering bone, wrenching muscle, tearing skin. The darkness reclaimed him before he hit the bottom.

~*~

"You're-" a kiss interrupted, and he let it wind its way through his mouth a good long while before he tried again. "You're different. Don't feel so – ah, Godyes, just there – so cold as last time."

"Harry," Severus released his earlobe to speak, "the dead do not grow warmer. It is you who have changed." He carded his long fingers into Harry's hair, silent approval of the unkempt tumble of curls. "You have made a near thing of it this time, my reckless Gryffindor."

Harry laughed and pressed his hips forward against Severus' answering tension. "I thought that was the point – get as close to dying as I can manage-"

"And still manage to return to life," teeth grazed the side of Harry's neck, taking the sting out of those harsh words.

"Ahh. Don't worry," he pushed away from the work table, and used a move his dance tutor had despaired of his ever mastering to spin his lover back against it, "Drennan's right there, and he knows his business. He'll make sure my mortal coil doesn't get shuffled before I've-" he paused to kiss Severus' mouth, "completed my-" the hinge of his jaw, "sacred-" ear, with a brief exploration by the tongue, and a pause to appreciate the noise that drew, "quest."

Severus gave a throaty growl, filled both hands with Harry's arse. Then in something between a toss, a shove, and a backwards shimmy, he managed to get them both up onto the table. Harry straddled his legs, grinning to find both their erections unrepentantly tenting the piled clothing between them.

"Robe," Harry gasped as Severus thumbed his nipples through the heavy fabric, "make them disappear. Like last time."

"You are no guest here," the ghost challenged, "do it yourself."

"What, just like that?"

"Unless you'd rather do it the long way," Severus gave a smug leer and rubbed the back of his hand against Harry's shrouded cock.

Harry threw back his head, gasping. "Nice to know you're still an unbelievable-" the robes shivered around them, ticklish and shimmering as they evaporated like steam into the darkness, "bastard!"

There was that eyebrow quirk. "You know, I'd gotten rather used to 'greasy git'." Harry laughed, kissed his lover's hooked nose, and gave a wriggle and fidget to get Severus blunt hardness pressed firmly against his entrance. A second fidget had the length breaching him -- slowly, breathlessly. "Ah, Merlin! So you were paying attention," Severus gasped at the easy slickness of Harry's body as it lowered tightly around him, "a miracle I thought this room would never see."

"This is where you stop talking," Harry said, grabbing his lover's head in both hands, holding him still for a plundering kiss. He seated his hips firmly with a shudder, and Severus swallowed his groan as the action pressed his balls up tight between the white stomach and his own aching erection.

Then they were moving, arching, lifting, thrusting and sliding together in wordless sympathy. Each movement from one balanced by the other, seamless and smooth, and still somehow frantic, grasping and greedy – all clutching fingers and sucking tongues sliding against each other, breath gasped coldly into one's lungs as the other exhaled it, and heat and friction and magic.

_Magic? _

Harry was too far gone to trace the random thought down; it was crawling up his spine like a serpent, flicking sparks from his eyes and teeth and fingers, jolting deep in his belly. Magic, and Severus, and Longing, and Hope all coiled up around his brain as the world narrowed down to the cock in his arse and the cock in his hand, and the climax shouting out of them both.

"What…what was that?" Harry gasped once he was able.

Severus collapsed back onto his elbows, and puffed his hair out of his face. "Your next lesson-" Harry's enthusiastic kiss cut him off.

"You're the best teacher ever," the young man giggled, pressing his sweaty forehead against Severus' shoulder, "what was I supposed to learn, other than that you make me come like a volcano?"

"Mph, nothing important, clearly," Severus grumbled, "just a little matter of who you really are once all the chains come off."

That caught Harry's attention. He sat upright, wincing a little as Severus' cock slipped out of him. "You think I had forgotten?" Severus didn't speak the answer, but Harry saw the truth of it in his solemn black eyes. He looked away, and then clambered off the worktable with a sigh. "I could never forget this, forget you."

Arms came around him, pulled him close against that familiar body, "Not me, perhaps, but you could not bear to remember yourself with that parasite in your mind." Harry let his head fall back against the shoulder, curled a little into the warm hollow of Severus' throat with its steaming, ragged wound. "He has taken up too much room in your soul, Harry – you must bring yourself back to the nest before you can push the cuckoo out."

"What do you-" a sudden twist in his guts broke Harry's question off with a gasp. He tried to curl around the pain, but Severus held him upright, strong fingers curling under his arms, smooth voice against the back of his neck.

"The second phase of the lesson," he said, half pushing, half carrying Harry toward the door to his office, "I'm afraid this will be difficult."

Harry staggered under another brutal spasm, "It makes my scar burn. The Mark too," he groaned, "what is it?"

"You know what it is."

Then the door swung open, and Harry did know, because instead of the poignantly familiar jumble of scrolls and books and glass and dust, the floor fell away into a vast, echoing pit. Air pulled into it from behind them, lifting chilly swirls of dust from the stones, and trailing them down into the blackness.

"Hell..."

"For some," Severus let him down to his knees at the threshold, settling one long hand on Harry's shoulder while the other petted his unruly hair, "Welcome oblivion for others. Neither one for you -- not today. How does it feel?"

"Hurts!" Harry wrapped both arms around his stomach, rocking on his knees as sweat iced over his skin. "It's the Bond, isn't it? Ow, God!"

"You cannot bring it up all at once," Severus warned as Harry leaned over the pit and gagged, "strong as you have become, that would still destroy you." He knelt, a solid presence at Harry's back, stroking, soothing, "Small pieces, single ingredients, tiny steps, Harry, concentrate. Unravel the knot one thread at a time -- where did the bindings begin?"

And then it clicked into place. "My wand," he gasped, and no sooner had the words left him than his throat was filling up with heat. He leaned out far, heaved for all he was worth, despite the tearing pain. Something poured out of his mouth, something which hurt to let go, but left a terrified sort of elation in the wake of its passing. Harry managed one shaking breath before other bindings began clawing up after the first; the title they called him, the hair they'd made him grow, the robes of his office, his arm locking stiff two inches from a drink, the Unforgivable curses, the vision spell that took away his glasses, the voice -- the _fucking _voice inside his head!

"I hear him," he gasped, wiping his mouth with one shaking hand, "I can hear him screaming."

"He could not fail to notice this," Severus agreed, urging Harry forward as he shuddered deeply, "pay him no mind. Again now."

And again, Harry vomited for all he was worth. Dancing lessons, clingy handshakes and shallow smiles, Charles on his knees with come on his lips and contrition in his eyes, the Grotto, the mirror, the serpent-headed cane, and _still_ the howling went on! Harry clawed at his left arm, at the Mark which ached like frozen wire under his skin.

Severus plucked his hand away. "No, Harry. Not yet." And then, when Harry dug at the scar on his forehead, "Not that one either. You will need them both if you intend to finish what you have begun."

"But I can hear him," Harry groaned, fingers hooked and bloody, "I can still fucking hear him!"

"Because you _hear_, not because he speaks!" Severus hauled him around and caught his chin. "You hear my voice, do you not?" Harry nodded, setting his teeth against the sudden urge to chatter with cold. "Then follow it," the ghost said, gathering Harry tightly against him, "I know where you belong -- let me lead you home."

~*~


	7. Lord Executor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Harry's robes as Lord Executor.


	8. La Mort Par le Sang

Harry woke to the creak of a hinge in the darkness. He lay still as the sleep sheeted off him, listened to the door latch snick closed, a whispered silencing spell, and then the approach of soft footfalls. Rustle. Click-slide. Clink. Then Iris's weight settled onto the bed at his hip.

Harry opened his eyes, blinked as the girl failed to come into focus. _No vision spel_l, he remembered, and gave the girl a weak smile. "What time is it?" He asked as she wiped the fringe off his forehead, "I've lost track."

She snorted. "That will happen when you spend so much time unconscious. Here, sit up a bit and drink this." Achingly, he did. The potion tasted like toad bile, and Harry didn't bother to hide his grimace. "I know," she smirked, "It can't be helped. Now this one. It's not so bad, you'll see...and these two together. That's good. Water?"

"Please," Harry choked. Her hand was soft on the back of his neck as she held the glass to his lips, and her breath gusted soft against his cheek.

"There," Iris said as he finished, "you'll start to feel the effects in a few minutes." She wiped a drip of water from Harry's chin with her fingers, then sat back again. "I've brought some broth, if you think you-"

"No, thanks," Harry fidgeted under the girl's intense stare. He flexed his right hand against the sling that bound it to his chest. "How bad was it this time?"

"Bad enough," she said, folding her arms across her small breasts and regarding him severely, "Not so showy as last time, to be sure, but you've a dislocated shoulder, and some torn up muscles in your feet and legs still. And Drennan's still not convinced you didn't crack a vertebra or two. He didn't mention your head, so I'm guessing your skull was thick enough to take the fall this time. You'll not be safe to move about on your own for a good while though, and I don't care what those fools downstairs say!"

"Oh?" Harry wondered, sliding his suddenly hot feet in search of a cool spot in the sheets, "Who's expecting me to tapdance after getting shoved down the stairs?"

"Shoved?" Her dark eyes narrowed, "Draco said you fainted. That lying little tosser!" She set the glass aside, and settled back onto the bed, bracing one knee along his legs, while the other foot stayed on the floor. "You're to be moved tomorrow, apparently -- by carriage since Drennan says you can't travel by apparation or portkeys for at least three months."

"What?"

"Easy," Iris caught his shoulders and pressed him back into the pillows, "It's not Lestrange, they want you at the Palace. Apparently," she made a bitter face, "the Great Lord was attacked while on the road to Lille yesterday -- that would have been the 30th, in case you want to know. Some terrible curse or other, got right through his defensive spells, they say. Some are saying it was a poison, others are thinking it was an inside assassination attempt by his bodyguards." She shrugged and flipped her braid over her shoulder, and Harry found himself staring at the curve of her neck, watching the muscles move, and the skin gleam golden in the single candle's light.

"Whatever the cause, they say he is unconscious, and unresponsive to any spell or potion they've thrown at him. He's been brought back to England, and the Minister wants you moved to the Palace at once." Her quick fingers knotted tightly in her sleeves, "I heard him telling Master Drennan about it. He made it sound as if Vol -- the Dark Lord uses you as some obscene sort of battery!"

"You can say his name when he's not around," Harry sighed, sweating uncomfortably now, and growing more than a little aware of the blood rushing under his skin. "And as for the battery thing, that's pretty much right on. You see, this scar," he swept his damp fringe from is forehead, "bound me to him when I was just a -- hang on," Harry stared at her suspiciously, "You know what a battery is? Were you Muggleborn?"

"Saw one once," she muttered, snatching a flannel from the bedside table, and dipping it into a basin, "had a muggle explain it. Here, you've gone all red -- let me put this behind your neck." Harry let her pull him into her, sighing gratefully as the cool cloth draped across his shoulders and dripped icily over his collarbones. The night air caressed his damp back, spreading gooseflesh across his arms, making his nipples pull taut.

Self-conscious, he made to sit back, but Iris pulled him closer still, wrapping one arm under his to drag the flannel down his spine and back up again. Harry moaned, shivering at the sensation -- his skin glowing-hot, the cloth like an icy brush painting his bones. And the smell of the girl; faintly bitter, potionish, but warm and spicy and musky as well. It made him want to turn his face into her neck, nuzzle the dark hair behind her ears to search out more of the complex scent.

Again the cloth painted ice down his back, and this time Harry shivered away from it. Her breasts gave under his braced arm, and she gasped, then pressed against him with an appreciative moan. "Harry..."

The sound of his name shook his brain awake, and he tugged away, wincing at the sudden barrage of aches. "I'm -- look, I'm sorry, I just-" he stared at the candle, willing his erection away while fiercely hoping the duvet was fluffy enough to hide it.

"Shh," Iris murmured, setting the flannel aside and slithering close again, "it's alright, I promise, just let me.…" She trailed her tongue along his jaw and up to his ear, where her breath set up a violent tremble that went all the way down to Harry's balls. Her small hand fell onto his thigh, then sought inward before Harry could work out what to do about it. She fisted the thick, fluffy duvet around his cock, delving her pointed tongue into his ear. Harry couldn't hold back a groan.

"Yes," she breathed, guiding his hand -- and hadn't he been pushing her away? -- into her robes. Her nipple rolled like a pebble against his palm, "yes, like that. It's good, isn't it? It's good. You're alright, Harry."

He rolled his hips upward, growling in search of more friction, tighter, hotter, _something!_ "What did you give me?" He demanded, then bit at the curve of her throat, "What was in that potion?"

"This," she squeezed his cock fiercely through the blankets before tugging them down, exposing his rampant, purpled erection to the air. Her calloused fingers followed, "just this, and these," she slipped her other hand down cradle his tight, heavy balls. "nothing that will hurt you, I promise. Trust me, Harry," she breathed, sliding down to plant a kiss on the smooth head, "please just trust me."

"I can't-" he fell back as she pressed his shoulder, "you -- don't, please!" But she was sliding across him, tugging her white apprentice's robe up over her head, and shaking her dark hair loose of its braid. He reached to push her off, and found himself groping at her breasts again, pulling her closer, tasting those rock-hard nipples. "Why?" He mumbled into her soft skin, "why are you doing this? AhhGOD!" Melting heat poured around his cock, drawing his hips up from the mattress in a frantic lunge.

She whined deep in her throat, and a vise seemed to ripple along Harry's length as she began to move, to writhe against him. "Shhh," she chanted as he grabbed at her hip, her arm, her belly and breast in a frantic attempt to balance his spinning world, "just let me, it's alright...." But the potion in his veins demanded more. Harry dug his heels against the sheets, heaved upward into the clasping wetness of this stranger's body, furious at himself, at her, at the world for reducing him to this frantic rut.

Her smell was a drug unto itself, salty and heavy as the restless ocean outside, but somehow solid, rich and musky in a way that made him growl and heave harder into her, as if by going deeper, he could somehow unravel her mysteries. She rocked against him, then fell into his chest, and captured his mouth with her own while her hips pistoned hard and fast above him. Her thighs slapped against his, and the blood roared in his ears.

Then a tremor raced through the lips he was devouring. A violent shiver, and more, a twisting pull -- as though the mouth were changing shape under his. The slick, straight black hair bunched up and twined about his fingers like fluffy vines. Then the mass of curls went golden brown in the candle light.

She groaned and sat back, tilting her face away as the changes raced through her body, limbs longer, breasts slightly larger, hips deeper, more angular, tighter, and _rippling_ around him.

"HERMIONE!" Harry screamed as he spent himself into her.

"Oh God, Harry," she sobbed, grinding herself against him, spasming around him like a gripping fist, "Oh God, yes!" Then she was kissing him again, and he was kissing her back, drowning any chance of explanation or apology in the frantic tussle of lips and tongues.

"Couldn't tell you...couldn't be sure," she gasped through the assault, "not till now...taking you; tomorrow...caravan, along the coast road. We're...not...letting... that parasite...mph!" She pulled away, panting, "We're not letting that parasite have you back! I don't care what sort of binding he's placed on you, we're getting through it!" She clenched her fists against his heaving chest, as if she would pound him for his expected argument. "He can't keep you, Harry, we won't let him! We'll find a way to break the binding, and we'll take you away from him, and-"

"Shh," Harry soothed, blinking and squinting, "it's okay, it's okay. Come here." He spread his unbound arm, and a second later, she was curled tight against him, her fluffy hair tickling his nose while her tears leaked hotly along his chest.

"Trust you to pull this off, Hermione," he laughed weakly, stroking her shoulder, "you've gone round the twist, coming in here after me like this! You're the most hunted woman in England -- on the spot death sentence if any Auror sees you, and here you are shagging me in the Minister of Magic's guest suite!"

"Last place anyone'd look for me, isn't it?" She sniffed, then lifted her head to search his gaze, "Oh, tell me I haven't ruined everything, Harry -- please tell me you don't hate me."

He put a hand to her cheek, and thumbed away a tear. "Of all the people who've drugged and molested me, Hermione, you've been my favorite by far." Her eyes went wide in horror, and her lip trembled before Harry let her off the hook with a chuckle.

"None of your cheek, Mr. Potter," she growled, thumping his shoulder, "I'll have you know I'm several of the most wanted criminals in England, and...and..." she bit her lip, then dove back to cuddle against his shoulder again, "God, Harry. There were so many times I just knew I'd never see you again. It was just awful knowing you were alive, reading those horrible stories about you in the papers, and knowing -- knowing you couldn't get away on your own!" she sniffed, hugged fiercely, "You understand, don't you? You see why we had to come -- why we have to try?"

"I know," Harry's voice was thick, and he swallowed against it. "I would have done the same. But you have to know-"

"Hush! No arguments, Harry," she sounded desperate in her certainty, "this is happening, and no one can stop it! Tomorrow, on the coast road, we're taking you, and even if you tell someone -- even if you turn me over to Lucius Malfoy and let him curse me to death right in this room, it will still-"

He kissed her quiet and knew she would never let him tell her the truth. Eventually she subsided, settling quiescent and soft along his right side. He wrapped his arm around her, pressed her close to feel her heart fluttering like a bird against his ribs. Harry wondered, as a shallow doze overtook him, what his heart must feel like to her. _False,_ he thought, stroking her shoulder, _Hollow. Broken._

~*~

The candle flickered, flared up high in the draughtless room, throwing a long, slender shadow across one of the pair of wing chairs that faced each other in front of the fireplace. With that, Harry was awake.

Even without his glasses or the vision spell to correct the blur, he could see the chair was empty -- no scowling shade lingered against the chintz, but he still felt... a chill, perhaps, or a watchfulness. Hermione stirred, mumbled and sighed against him, her hand flexing and closing against his chest, just by the sling. Harry smoothed his hand against the back of her head, wordlessly pressing her deeper into sleep.

Around him, the big old house breathed, its dreams creaking in the walls and itching out of the settling stones, its memories replayed in hues of moonlight, splashing across the carpets and printed walls. Harry brushed the house's dreams with a curious finger, but found them too cold, too proud and lonely to linger over for long. He turned his seeking to the inhabitants instead.

The house elves nested tightly together in their low room, a close-cuddled pack that dreamed in scent and taste and perfect unison. They noticed Harry, sniffed curiously after him, but then became distracted by the flavor of moonlight in his wake.

Draco, lay diagonally across his bed, fully clothed and armored in alcoholic oblivion. Harry could taste the remnant of a severe talking-to from his father on the brandy-fume of the blonde's breath. Three of his fingers were taped together, and Harry could see the shadow of a serpent-headed cane across the bindings as he passed on.

Pansy was nervy, restless in the big old house that had begun to frighten her lately. She tossed fretfully, murmured as his mind brushed past hers -- he didn't stop to hear whether it was a warding, or a plea.

Drennan was a still spot in the dreaming tide; quiet and too deep for Harry to pierce at a casual glance. He remembered the mediwizard's occlumancy, and passed on before he was spotted himself.

The sisters curled like mirror opposites across the house, identical in intensity, pride, and resentment. Their thoughts, even in dreams circled each other like a binary sun, each snared into the other's pull, and hating its twin for all of its worth. With Lucius absent, they held the house, and all within it in the fierce gravity between them. Harry left those sleeping dragons untickled. For now.

He pulled his mind back to the dreamer in his arms, tasted her slumbering thoughts like baby kisses. One in particular made him stop, eyebrows shooting up in surprise. He ran his hand gently down Hermione's back, and found it true. And then he couldn't stop a beatific, if rather stunned smile from settling across his face.

"Oh, you clever girl," he murmured, "read your Tam Lin, haven't you?" She grunted sleepily, and he ran a finger along her cheek, releasing his somnolent pressure as he called her name. "Hermione, wake up."

Like any combat veteran, she came awake at once, still and wary and ready to move. But then she blinked up into Harry's eyes, and the tension bled out of her again. "Sorry," she said, knuckling one eye, "dozed off."

"I know, me too. But you have to go now." Harry pulled the covers away, let the cooler air in. "You need more polyjuice."

"Damn, you're right," she scrambled after her robes, shaking them straight with a vigorous flap, "And even Iris couldn't afford to get caught with you like this -- Drennan would kill me!"

"Can't have that," Harry smiled, accepting a kiss from her, "you've a big day tomorrow."

She cast him a suspicious glare. "Remember, it IS happening. You can't stop it, and if you try-"

"I won't try," Harry promised, brushing a curl out of her face, "I don't want any of you to get hurt. I never wanted that, Hermione, especially not you, especially not now."

She blushed, pressed her hand over his for a moment, then snatched up the tray and padded from the room. "Tomorrow," she whispered on the threshold, then she was gone.

Harry stared after her for a long while.

"I know what you're going to say," he addressed the empty wing chair at last, "You always did whatever you thought was best for me, even when it made me want to choke you." Moving carefully, Harry pulled himself out of the bed and made his way to the facing chair. The dressing gown still hung there, and he pulled it around himself as best he could before sitting.

"I can't blame her, you know? It's bloody brilliant, really," he sighed, "She must have been dosing herself with potions by the gallon to be certain it would happen. But I know she didn't do it for me -- she did it for herself, in case they should fail tomorrow. In case they should have to kill me. I think it's great, but it doesn't change who I am," Harry's voice tightened, and he shook his head to clear it. "and it doesn't change what I have to do."

"It could," he shivered at the low, smooth reply he hadn't expected, "if you chose to allow it." More changing rules, more twisting in the middle of the game. Why could nothing ever stick to the plan? Harry grit his teeth, but the anger evaporated when a coolness like two ghostly fingers brushed across the back of his hand. "No one ever doubted you had the courage to die for those you love, Harry Potter. The question now, is do you have the courage to live for them?"

Harry stared at the fire for a very long time, and did not answer.

~*~

Ever since Azkaban, Bellatrix Lestrange did not dream. Yes, she would allow that images paraded before her sleeping eyes, but those were not dreams, they were plans, prophecies. Those half-remembered images were her way of subtly tugging at the web of reality into the shape she preferred. She knew this, because so many of her dreams came to fruition.

She had dreamed her Red-Eyed Lord's return and triumph, and lo -- it had come to pass. She had dreamed her escape from Azkaban, and now she walked free. She had dreamed her revenge upon her traitorous cousin, and his dying look was her most cherished memory. She had dreamed the dead-weight lump of a useless husband succumbing at last to poisoned claret, and she was now the Widow Lestrange. She had dreamed a special regard from the Master of her world -- a particular spark, a trust, a confidence in her that he bore no other, and he had spoken to her at the Midsummer Ball, over the pathetic corpse the Minister had refused to clear away. "He grows too willful, Bella," her Lord had said, "I must do something about him, don't you think?" Of course she had known just the thing. And so, like a sapper in the night, she set about ridding her Lord of his troubling, over-ambitious Minister.

Her dreams were above the common lot, Bellatrix knew; just as was she herself. Thus, when her dreams warned her to have her carriage readied an hour before dawn, she saw no reason to question the truth of it. Nor did she debate the wisdom of kidnapping the Great One's toy out from under his bumbling caretakers. Her Lord had bidden her to bring the boy to the Palace upon His return -- he had bidden HER to do it, not Malfoy, and not that mudblood healer either.

Her Lord was returned. Bellatrix's course seemed crystal clear.

She knew the plan -- had eavesdropped the firecall. The Toy Who Lived would be moved by carriage at nine, the mudblood and his useless little servant riding with him while Aurors guarded the road. A simple plan to thwart. Child's play.

A spell led her to the right suite, another bound the still form on the bed into an unyielding cocoon of bedclothes. His green eyes stared at her levelly when she levitated him upright, and she was a bit taken aback by the lack of fear there. Well, perhaps the boy was fond of such immobility -- that could be promising. Bellatrix had always wanted to try mummification.

_Later._ She promised herself with a smirk, _There will be time for playing when the rewards are given out._

"So you see, boy, I was right," she couldn't resist gloating, "you really don't have any choice but to come with me."

"But I do," he said with an odd little smile.

Bellatrix laughed aloud at his bravado. But then as she turned to go, she found her youngest sister glowering icily from the doorway, wand out and leveled steadily at her breast.

~*~

Narcissa awoke with a cold dread and no urge whatsoever to second guess it. Bella was planning something. The woman never let anything go, no matter how much of a scene she made -- she never had done. No broken wrist was going to keep her in her place.

She glimpsed the Lestrange carriage waiting in the courtyard as she hurried past the gallery windows. Its lamps were unlit, and its wheels muffled in pale cloth so as to make no noise on the cobbles. _Like a thief in the night,_ Narcissa thought, furious and shaking, _No Black daughter creeps away in the darkness -- not even a mad one!_

She knew, what she would find, but hope still curdled in her stomach as she came to West Suite's open door. Inside, by flickering candlelight, her sister went about betraying Narcissa's trust, her kinship, and her hospitality, all with a cunning smile on her ravaged face.

A tear rolled down Narcissa's face as she watched Bellatrix immobilize the boy, and levitate him behind her. _How could you, Bella?_ Narcissa allowed herself one single moment of grief, then crushed it ruthlessly. No living soul toyed with Narcissa's family thus -- no one! Bellatrix's envy at her better marriage, her bitterness and petty theatrics were one matter, but such treachery was not to be borne!

She did not challenge her sister -- it had gone too far beyond honour for that, but she did at least wait until Bellatrix met her eyes to fire her curse.

~*~

Pansy awoke to a scream and a flare of light. Her first instinct was panic. _Where am I? Oh, Merlin, not sleepwalking again! _ She pressed a hand over her pounding heart and tried to breathe deep. _Haven't done that since I was little!_

Another crash made her jump and squeak, whirling just in time to see a door down the hall explode from its hinges and crash through the facing window. A woman's triumphant shriek echoed through the hallway, but a shouted curse cut it off with a flare.

"Oh no!" Pansy gasped, frozen with horror, "Oh, they can't be!" But it was -- even warped in anger, Pansy knew the cursing voice for that of her Mother-in-law, and the ragged scream which followed for the Widow Lestrange. And that room -- that was where they'd put Potter, wasn't it?

"Oh no, oh no," she dithered. Lucius was gone from the house, Draco drunker than Silenus upstairs, and who knew where that useless mediwizard had gotten to? There was only her, without her wand or her nerve to try and break up the row before someone got killed. She spied a glint of reflected moonlight a little further down the hallway, and a second later secured herself a reassuringly weighty knife from one of the collection displays. She would have preferred her wand, but the steel looked sharp, and felt potently magical in her shaking hand -- perhaps it would startle them enough to listen to reason. Anyway, it was better than facing the maddened sisters empty-handed!

_Steady on now, Pans,_ she told herself as something inside the room exploded into flames, _Remember what Papa Lucius says -- it's all about Presence!_

"What is going on here?!" She demanded, striding into the room, knife held before her. She had a second to take it in -- Bellatrix rising from behind the overturned wardrobe, Narcissa turning from the shadow of the bedstead, Potter lying across the hearthstones in a rigid twist of blankets.

_"Expelliarmus!"_ Both sisters screamed the spell. Pansy could only squeak as the blade wrenched out of her grip and went flying -- a glittering arc across the darkened room, a whistling, air-cutting sound. Then a crack of apparation, and Potter stood directly in the knife's path, arms out-stretched and green eyes flashing.

It sank into his throat with a sickening, meaty thud. Potter gurgled, staggering back as the blood sheeted down his naked chest. He met her eye in the second before he collapsed -- he met her eye and his lips seemed to move.

To the end of her days, Pansy swore that he had thanked her.

~*~

"It's time," Harry said.

"Yes," Severus greeted him with a chaste kiss, stroked one finger sadly along Harry's torn throat, "time at last."

The great black door stood wide open, and the pit beyond it drew a chill, hungry draft around their knees. Harry looked at it with a shiver. "I hardly know where to begin," he said.

Cold fingers curled around his left arm, raised it to the light. "As with any potion," Snape said, "you must begin with the base."

"You said the Mark was a bit of Voldemort's soul," Harry mused, eyeing the glistening keloid scar-pattern. It tickled near the serpent's blunted nose, and he picked at it idly. "But he couldn't have done that with all the Morsmordre -- there have been so many since the war. If it were me, I would only go to that length with the really powerful followers, or maybe the ones I wasn't certain I could trust."

"Both, I should think," Snape nodded, "Those on whom he relies in distress, he never fully trusted. This will not be the death of thousands, but the Hydra will not prosper after you're finished here."

"Just the worst ones," Harry agreed, cold inside but still resolved, "they'll go first." Then, because he had learned that Laws of this place were fluid and not very binding, really, Harry dug his fingernails into the Morsmordre, scraping up skin and scar tissue until he found the solid, pulsing core of magic hidden underneath. Gasping at the burn of it, he tugged and clawed until he managed to get one finger underneath and look: a black thread, smoking against his bloody finger, a sizzling little curse in his pinched grip.

Harry took a deep breath, hardened his fluttering belly, and began to pull. The mark tore up like the roots of a weed through damp earth, leaving ragged furrows in his skin. From time to time he would yank loose a blister in the line, like a black gall, or a bead of solder. Most were withered and hollow, but a few were solid; fleshy, hot, and pulsing with a heartbeat rhythm. Each gave up its name as he pulled it free -- MacNair, Dolohov, three Malfoys -- apparently Draco had been more valuable than he thought -- Jugson, DeRais, Lestrange -- which he yanked out with a grim smile -- Augustin, Nott, Rookwood. The list grew heavier as the twisting, struggling curse unspooled, and dragged along the souls on which it had fed for years.

_God, it goes on forever!_ Harry thought, swaying weakly as the pain washed over him in clammy waves, _I'll never get them all out! _

"Hush," Severus urged, seizing Harry's shoulders from behind and pressing close, "Just a little more now."

"It's too heavy." The pit at his feet drew a fierce, hungry gust, ruffling Harry's fringe into his eyes and he shuddered. His scar was a punishing spike of pain, and the curse tangled about his fingers like white-hot wire. The souls bound up in its length rattled against each other like hollow bones. "There's too many!"

"Hold fast, Harry," Severus' hand slid cool across his forehead, catching the drop of blood that was creeping toward his eyes, "One more pull."

Sucking a deep breath, Harry pulled, though his arm spasmed with the pain and his scar blinded him with white static. He pulled though the curse split his fingertips to the bone. He pulled though it felt like he was drawing his own soul out through his arm. He pulled, and his grinding roar bore down into a scream as the massive, crushing weight tore free at last. Harry closed his eyes, trembling against Severus' hold, and gasping like a landed fish, and sure that if his ghostly lover weren't holding him up, he would topple into that yawning blackness at his feet.

The Morsmordre slipped through his lax fingers, rattled to the floor like a ton-weight of chain. Harry could hear the thing ticking as it cooled against the stone. "Is it over?" He wondered at the sudden absence of pain in his head.

In answer, Snape turned them both. Voldemort lay sprawled on stones, pallid and reptilian, his narrow chest fluttering weakly. Harry weathered a giggly urge to say 'You're nothing but a pack of cards!'. But then the crimson eyes snapped open, fixed directly, and balefully on Harry's face, and he lost all trace of amusement. Harry didn't need to hear his mind voice to read the look -- every variation of death threat imaginable lay in that baleful glare, but then the unearthly eyes slid from Harry's face, and widened to recognize who stood behind him.

"Severus," the Heir of Slytherin hissed, getting carefully to his feet, "has no one thought to tell you you're dead?"

"I do not let it trouble me," the ghost smirked. His hands moved from Harry's shoulders for a moment, and suddenly Severus' head came to rest beside Harry's own, balanced in one clever, long-fingered hand. Harry managed not to jump, but Voldemort didn't. "I had it by good example," Snape went on smugly, "that death needn't necessarily alter one's long term plans. Especially where vengeance is concerned."

Voldemort laughed, and managed not to sound shrill, but Harry didn't miss the red eyes' flickering glance between the pit, and the headless spectre. "Vengeance, Severus? What vengeance do you imagine you can visit upon me? I have walked these shadows before, and I know what can be done with them. Your little vengeance will leave me all the stronger, and when I bind your shade into a mirror for my own amusement, I will teach you to redefine the word!"

"Oh, my GOD, will you shut up?" Harry snapped, ducking out of Snape's admittedly creepy embrace, "You always do this! You prance and you threaten, and then you send other people to carry it all out, so nobody guesses what a pathetic old prune you are!" He kicked the mangled remnants of his Morsmordre into the pit, and tried not to think of what it meant. The tumbling, fading rattle filled the chamber with echoes, "Well this time, you're here on your own. No Quirrel, no Pettigrew, no Crouch or Lestrange to do your dirty work, and haul your arse out of the fire. You're dying for real this time, and there's no one left to save you. So if you have some trick left to try, just get on with it!"

"Oh, I am not so alone as that, Pet," Voldemort replied, waking Harry's forehead scar to agony with a sudden outthrust hand, "You are still mine," Harry heard the serpentine rattle on the words as his vision blurred and bled under the onslaught, "You are bound to me, and I command everything about you. You will have no victory, and no vengeance, and no release save that which I give you!"

"Bollocks!" Harry ground, wiping blood from his face as the scar wept hotly.

Snape's chuckle cut off Harry's reply. "You can own nothing of a cat but its skin, Mr Riddle," he said, still tossing his head from hand to hand as he circled to flank the Dark Lord, "and you ought to have considered that before you chained this cat with his still on. He has outgrown your chains now."

Harry grunted as his scar gave a particularly violent pulse, and streaked his vision with white. "Not that one," Voldemort pointed as Harry clapped a hand to it, "that chain will always bind him to me!"

"No," he gasped, staggering against the doorway beside the pit, "It goes both ways!"

As before, he knew what to do. There had always been magic in his scar -- now he caught it by the tail and pulled it out. It came free like a raveling bolt of hot, wet silk, and it clung weakly to his fingers as he dropped it into the pit's hungry draught. Memories hid there too, and these came forth like pearls on a string. They chimed like breaking crystal as they fell.

"What are you doing?" Voldemort cried, and it was Harry's turn to reply with a laugh.

"You hid way too much of yourself in me, don't you think?" He glanced back with a grin, "Bet I can peel you apart from here, and drop you in by pieces!" The pit responded with a great, longing breath, and Harry had to catch himself against it, "What do you think will come up next, Tom -- your soul hidden in a duck's egg?"

That cracked it. Voldemort charged him, face twisted into a frantic rictus, his hands hooked like talons. Harry turned, reaching out, ready to catch his enemy close, and hurl them both over the edge, but strong, long-fingered hands seized him, slung him out of the Dark Lord's path. Voldemort twisted, skittering, teetering on the hungry pit's edge, reaching in a frantic grab for his link to Harry. The wind rose to a howl through the doorway, dragging the pallid figure deeper into the darkness. Hissing and nearly blinded with pain, Harry jerked against Severus' hold, trying to reach out, or to fling himself after.

"Not this time, Tom," a calm, firm voice cut through the howling wind. Then a flash of silver and scarlet blazed through the straining space between Harry and the Dark Lord. The Sword of Gryffindor -- it had saved Harry's life too often for him not to recognize even a glimpse of it.

The link pulled keening tight under the blade, and then snapped so hard it rocked Harry's head on his neck. He staggered, still pinioned in Snape's iron grip. A scream rattled echoes from the stones. Fading. Harry thought it might be himself making the noise, but couldn't tell for certain.

And when the pain cleared as Harry could see again, there was Dumbledore, smiling from the edge of the pit where Voldemort had been. "There now," the Headmaster twinkled over his spectacles, "just the one thing left then, Harry."

The scar itched, feeling loose and dry as a shed scab. Harry's fingers shook as he pulled the old, familiar mark off his face. It lay curled in his palm like a dry leaf; heavy and somehow final.

"I won't be going back," he said, to the scar, which looked far too small, to Dumbledore, who looked sad, to Snape, whose fingers tightened at the words, "not this time."

"It is not too late, Harry," Dumbledore pressed gently, "You could still live if you put your will to it. This chamber holds life-force in plenty for you to heal your wounds, and return to those who love you."

The hands on his shoulders trembled. Harry knew they would release him the instant he pulled away, so he leaned fiercely back into his lovers chest. "No," he said, "I'm not running away, and it's not that I'm afraid to live, it's just…" He brandished the scrap of scar in his hand, "It's just that after all I've gone through, after all I've done to finally destroy him, I can't run the risk of bringing Voldemort back with me. I would live for Hermione, Lupin, Hagrid," Harry stroked his temple against the ghostly chin behind him, "I would even live for Severus if I could, but I will _not_ live for Tom Riddle!"

"And if Riddle is truly gone?" Dumbledore prodded, "Will you refuse your chance at a life free of his taint?"

"One thing Severus finally managed to teach me," Harry replied, tipping the scar off his palm, and watching the pit's slipstream catch it up and pull it in, "is that sometimes, the risk is just not worth it."

He sought his lover's eyes, half afraid to find the same disappointment there as lurked in Dumbledore's gaze. "Will you forgive me for wanting to stay with you?"

Snape wrapped him around, and held him close. "No," the voice purred in his ear, "but just try and get away from me now, you insufferable brat!"

And Harry had to laugh, throwing his arms around the solid, beloved chest. "It's over. It's really over!"

"Yes, dear boys," Dumbledore replied wistfully as the dark chamber began to fill up with light, "I believe it is at last time for us to go."

~*~

She sat on her knees; stunned cold and numb. The blood was absolutely everywhere -- so much she could hardly believe it had all come from him. It soaked the Turkish carpet to a sticky black mess in the dawnlight, it painted his still, pale chest, it wicked up the gauzy drapes behind him. _So very much blood..._

She quelled a tremor of nausea, and made herself look at his face while the stunned House Elves dithered over the other corpses. She could hear Pansy's hysterics echoing up the staircase; Drennan's firecall to their Ministry contact was a low murmur against her wailing. The Malfoy and Lestrange dynasties were severed; leaving Pansy one of the richest widows in the Wizarding world, and all the worthless debutante could manage to do was bawl at the top of her lungs. A part of Hermione wanted to march downstairs and smack the silly bint, but only a small part. The larger portion wanted only to kneel there by Harry's side, watching the depthless green eyes stare into nothing. Maybe keen a little herself.

_I ought to say something,_ she thought, waving a fly away, _A prayer. Something...._ But she didn't dare speak. Words hung heavy in her throat, knocking bitterly against each other in their crowded prison. Hermione feared them. 'Bad luck to curse the dead,' her father always told her, 'give them the rest they've earned, and keep your passion for those who can answer back.'

She trailed her finger on Harry's cold, silent lips. No answers there -- never again. If Harry knew what had afflicted Voldemort and his followers, he would never say now. Her curiousity might be affronted by the mystery, but down deep, Hermione knew she was more comfortable without that particular truth. Let him take it to his grave. She had something more precious to take away with her.

"I've been thinking, about names" she managed at last, proud that her voice did not shake, "Not Harry, of course, because that will always be you. But maybe Ron, if it's a boy." Hermione sniffed, blinked hard, "And if it's a girl, I think I'd rather like to call her Lily..." She traced his beatific smile again, "Oh, Harry, why today?"

But footsteps on the marble stairs cut through the impending tears. Hermione knew they had to slip away, and soon. Hagrid, Neville, and Lupin would need to be warned, the raid aborted. And who knew when the Aurors would come to find out why every Death Eater in Malfoy Manor had their own deaths crammed down their throats?

But there was one thing she had to do first.

Trailing her finger in the blood, Hermione scrawled a crimson pattern on the floor beside Harry's head. A short, squat cylinder. Brief lines hovering above it, ticked with sanguine flame at each tip. Three words printed carefully inside the oval top.

"Well, girl," Drennan's voice filled the room, unchecked by any reverence for the corpses within, "it looks as if Voldemort wasn't the only one who died inexplicably last night. Chernley says they haven't been able to find a single Cabinet member still alive this morning." his shadow fell across Hermione's work, and his words trailed off as she sat back and wiped her hands clean.

"So you did it after all," Hermione whispered, reading the dead man's odd smile differently now, "You won, Love. You won."

"Here now," the mediwizard set their bags on the floor, "what've you done there?" He leaned over to read quizzically aloud. "Happy Birthday Harry?"

"Happy Birthday," she agreed, and brushed his green eyes closed at last.

~Fin~


End file.
